Seems like some things don't change on the negotiation front, I was one of only three serving fs that could do a particular job, that trapped all three of us in a post for four years to deploy world wide for months on end with not much more than an hours notice. We did not mind doing it, but the three of us were told we would get re toured in the same post at another unit, no negotiation, no nothing !
Needless to say, once that was confirmed we all submitted PVR,s and left within 3 months, all three of us.
but from a negotiating point of there's no negotiating, we were all told we would be warrant officers in the next 6 months, we could name an area we wanted to be in and would do there best to give it us, all three of us left and have significantly better paid jobs in the civil aviation industry ( twice as much ) and have not really looked back.
i called a halt to sqdn leaders and wing commanders asking questions of how do we do this ? Three months after I left, unless they wanted to pay me a significant consultancy fee of course !
Would have loved to have got to the top of the trade I was in but not at any cost, seems that's a hard thing for personnel management to get into there minds, as effectively past 22 years I was paying a half of my wage in unclaimed pension !
And a job becomes to be not the most over arching thing in your life.
it must have taken the raf at least 18 months to two years to recover from that, it would have taken them that long to train replacements.