[CallMeIshmael]

Hippo – was the return of staff travel (with conditions) with no seniority an act of reconciliation by BA, or BA covering themselves as the appropriate procedures may not have been followed when staff travel was withdrawn in the first instance?

The Cabin Crew 89 CC89 union, viewed I believe by BA as moderate and usually amenable, were the first to reject BA’s offer. They thought it pointless to put it to their membership as it failed to address several critical points.

If you believe the offer was good enough to be acceptable then am sure the current ballot will be either close or in BAs favour. If the CC viewed it as unacceptable then there is likely to be a large majority for industrial action.

As I have posted earlier, I believe BA will win the war, but lose the peace. Whilst the leadership find it acceptable to bully, victimise, marginalise a union representing around 7000 of the front line team, ignore agreements, refuse binding arbitration etc they will not be trusted and morale will be impacted.

Once BA has a mindset and acts being ethical, principled, honuorable and fair they will start being trusted by their employees. Playing brinksmanship, exploiting loopholes and technicalities is no way for an ethical employer to build and lead a motivated team, let alone a high performing team. BA may engage the market and the competition with those tactics but not employees. STOP IT.

Start addressing on the root cause of the grievance.

I find this to be a pragmatic analysis

http://www.whitehallpages.net/news/160226

[HonestCrew]

Hippo.
I can’t stress enough the point that there may have been a better offer tabled by BA before the current one and “BASSA should have taken it” but it goes back to the point I made about definitions and wordings. Every offer that has been made has had loopholes that can be exploited. It is sad to say that a great company such as BA has so much history of doing this to their employees, this is why BASSA always stands firm on everything and seemingly give very little.
Yes, there is no guarantee on future earnings in a business economy, but when offering a new contract at least offer something that gives the crew some knowledge that items within the contract are bindining and any further changes can be discussed in the future.

Also, another of the many things outsiders may not know is that Willie Walsh made it a prioirty from the start of his reign to bring in low paid cabin crew on the Virgin Atlantic model of employing youngsters on low pay, working them extremely hard, the crew are keen and excitied and proud to do the job, but after a couple of years realise they can’t live on the low wages and leave. Costs are low as there are few yearly wage rises and of course very few pensions to worry about.
This was called Project Columbus. BASSA and all the crew knew the plan was coming since well before the first strikes.

Again, please folks, believe me, as if I was a member of your family, there is so much the public do not realise and would honestly not believe at our once proud airline.
At the start maybe some crew thought BASSA were not being flexible enough. Now everyone can see why and support for them high.
If only you knew what our head of Inflight Service has done over the last 2 weeks, you would be appalled.

[craigwatson]

Honest Crew – “Also, another of the many things outsiders may not know is that Willie Walsh made it a prioirty from the start of his reign to bring in low paid cabin crew on the Virgin Atlantic model of employing youngsters on low pay, working them extremely hard, the crew are keen and excitied and proud to do the job, but after a couple of years realise they can’t live on the low wages and leave. Costs are low as there are few yearly wage rises and of course very few pensions to worry about. This was called Project Columbus. BASSA and all the crew knew the plan was coming since well before the first strikes”

This is what shold be happening, young cabin crew doing the job for the “lifestyle” for a few years, and then moving on.

You cant say safety would be affected as all cabin crew go through the same training, and just because you have had a few more years of refreshers sessions of the same old training doesnt make you any better at it.

As to the service I actually think it might be better, as the crew would still be excited and interested in the work, whereas after a good few years I think some of the older crew become a bit burntout.

Again this is just my opinion.

[Alasdair]

“A bit burnt out”… this is ageist and indicates that every industry which stereotypically should show a pretty young face hence denying a majority of the public from a career.

May I just ask, if any of you were offered a job and a salary from a financially robust company and accepted, and then this financially robust company (as recently stated by their very own CEO) turned around and made it clear that within a short number of years the writing is on the wall (for any resemblance of the life you lead presently) unless you are willing to sign an uncertain contract with uncertain terms and conditions offering potentially a much lower salary. What would you do?

If you were part of a Unionised workforce, would you try and fight this by standing by the one body that could potentially protect you? Accepting of course, they are not 100% perfect. As far as Cabin Crew are concerned it is Unite which has any inkling of their interests at heart, not BA.

[craigwatson]

Alasdair – “May I just ask, if any of you were offered a job and a salary from a financially robust company and accepted, and then this financially robust company (as recently stated by their very own CEO) turned around and made it clear that within a short number of years the writing is on the wall (for any resemblance of the life you lead presently) unless you are willing to sign an uncertain contract with uncertain terms and conditions offering potentially a much lower salary. What would you do?”

Answer – look for a new job

[Alasdair]

In this time of plenty craig? Wrong answer!

Why should they? It is not morally, ethically or financially warranted and therefore their actions are completely understandable.

[StephenLondon]

Alasdair,
This happens all the time in the corporate world, globally. Many companies will approach their employees and say they need to alter pay / conditions / terms to ensure viability of the business. Some people leave, others stay just to be sure of having a job and some income (which is better than none). Why should BA be different? Remember that the rest of the airline has made concessions – why should one group not?

[Alasdair]

So do you consider management pay rises as set out in this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/27/willie-walsh-gets-12-per-cent-pay-rise Along with an extremely lenient arrangement with the flight crew which can be viewed through BALPA in any way fair?

If I remember rightly, Unions offered concessions on behalf of this employee group falling just £10 million short of initial management figures. Subsequently as a result of non-negotiation, BA suffered the resulting Industrial Dispute which has cost £100’s of millions (and they remain ‘financially robust’).

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Alasdair

Life isn’t fair.

Senior execs, right or wrongly, can command big salaries; what does your local council CEO earn? (and s/he ain’t ever going to get a crack at a big corporate like BA.)

Pilots make a big investment in their training, at £60K, if not more and there is also a big time element.
Pilots also have different skills to cabin crew. Like solicitors and their legal secretaries, pilots are paid more than cabin crew.

Cabin crew do a great job, but the mandatory qualifications are low (as in a PhD can flip burgers at McDonalds, but will get only burger flipper rates, as the qualification is unecessary) and so is the pay.

The cabin crew situation at BA became out of line with the market and there is now an ‘adjustment’ back to reality.

I do empathise for those affected for it was not their fault that BA agreed ot the rates of pay. Thay have built lives and expectations around those rates of pay.

But now it is a case of plus ca change and it will happen.

[Alasdair]

You prove my point Disgusted.

Pilots didn’t have to be Pilots and CEO’s didn’t have to be CEO’s and I am not begrudging anybody’s salary… only pointing out what it is. Fair play to them, and in my book also to the Cabin Crew for joining BA when BA offered what they did.

Crew could have followed alternative career paths and indeed be earning quite substantial salaries, more than they are with BA, but they chose its offerings and now they are trying to hold on to their contract – initially, from what I saw, through quite reasonable methods and now unfortunately for all us public it has turned messy.

[Deleted User]

Do a certain number of British Airways pilot recruits get a training sponsorship and do any of these sponsorships have to be repaid?

Cabin Crew and Pilots do have vastly differing responsibilities and it seems each should have to do their bit towards helping the financial situation.

I recall only a couple of years ago when Mr. Walsh asked for employees across the company to voluntarily give up a months pay. Flight deck crew have resolved pay issues and at the same time suffered from around 77 redundancies.

What ever the rights or wrongs of the cabin crew situation, one point that cant help is the number of unions involved. Who can blame employees in one union, happy with their pay and conditions, not wishing to support colleagues in dispute from another union.

If British Airways agreed in the past to overpay a certain section of their work force (even if in error) as suggested above, then I would have thought that the airline should show a little more consideration to those employees that could arguably claim that they had been misled.

[CallMeIshmael]

I understand Cabin Crew offered to take pay cuts similar to pilots but this was rejected.
There was sufficient normal attrition within CC not to need redundancies.

I believe if CC were given a similar (but pro-rated) deal as Pilots they would have accepted it. I reality the pilots were paid-off as BA could not afford IA on two fronts. Pilots having a far stronger negotiating position.

It can be acceptable for BALPA not to support cabin crew (though when the tables were turned two years ago BALPA was grateful for cabin crew support) but it is highly questionable when pilots volunteered to work down, at an extremely high cost, as cabin crew, in order to help nullify the cabin crew IA.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23842360-ba-pilots-let-fly-at-rude-passengers-online.do

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/09/ba-strike-pilot-work-conditions

The agreement pilots appear to have secured – no deminution of package wrt the new, low cost mixed fleet, also agreements with their Iberia counterparts to ensure one group is not played of against the other – will mean other areas within BA will have to make deeper cuts.

[VintageKrug]

More misleading and poorly referenced pseudo-facts set out above.

BASSA’s leadership proposed an alleged £170m in savings (part of which was a temporary pay cut); when independently audited by PwC, this was discovered to actually total no more the £52m.

Also any savings were to be considered a ‘loan’ to be repaid, in full, after two years. So no savings at all, in fact.

BA needs a structural change in its cost base, BASSA leadership refused to negotiate, and has serially failed to put the many offers made by BA to its membership for a democratic vote.

The lack of any economic intelligence at Unite is squarely evidenced in this radio programme, where Len McCluskey’s team is exposed for muddling the national debt with the deficit (from 16:00 in):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xb0sc/More_or_Less_14_01_2011/

Deficit is now 10.4% of GDP, higher than it has ever been since WW2.

Holley has absolutely no interest – financial, ethical or otherwise – in engineering an end to this dispute on behalf of his members; in fact from his perspective the longer he continues in his cushy union role, the better.

Thankfully, BA stands firm against him and hopefully the BASSA leadership will be replaced by a more pragmatic negotiating body with which BA can have a constructive relationship.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Alasdair

You can argue it anyway you wish, but the reality is that BA has now got mixed fleet and the ‘old’ contract and the ’97’ contract are history, just a question of when the last person on either moves on or retires.

If BA was a ruthless employer, it would have given all CC notice and then offered them mixed fleet terms.

Unfortunately for cabin crew, their skills are more easily replaced than senior execs or pilots.

Having said that, I repeat that I have a lot of sympathy for many of the people affected, but that counts for nothing.

[Hippocampus]

The CC89 branch of Unite and its membership has now linked the current dispute to the previous dispute.

Over to the lawyers.

“- any settlement must also address the initial issues that caused the dispute, especially imposition, and the continuing breaking of our agreements.”

http://uniteba.com/LATESTNEWSUPDATES.html

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