No doubt this will cause a stir!!!
Well guess it was no surprise that Unite/Bassa and its members would reject the proposal put forward by BA at the meeting held today. I think this was a foregone conclusion even before the meeting took place! As I read through the story on the BB news website as well as being an avid follower of all the posts on here and alot of the other "facts" that have been published regarding both proposals how much is fact and how much is fiction. So many varying figures it almost hard to see through the "smoke" what is actually going on. A couple of examples.....
1) The number of redundancies/job cuts ranging from 2000 to 5000 depending on who is "speaking.... Ironic though that with the initial 2000 job cuts required over 3000 BA staff/crew showed interest in voluntary redundancy!!
2) Unite/Bassa proposal talked about saving around £173 million. This is now between £100m and £130m. That seems to be a big difference even for someone without a maths degree or a calculator. Worst case scenario how can the savings suddenly be down by £73million. Doesn't really add up.
3) 2000 cabin crew vote to dismiss the BA proposal. I wonder what the other 12,000 think!. Guess their views don't count.
4) How many of those people that voted to dismiss the proposal have the most to lose?
I write this not as an employee of British Airways or a member of Unite/Bassa but as someone whose partner works for BA, who has a number of friends working for BA and someone who has spent the past few months listening to speculation, rumour, scare mongering all of which serves no purpose whatsoever. Times are hard for everyone, everywhere in the world. A whole variety of businesses are cutting costs, cutting staff, finding ways to save money. Not all of them are popular. Nothing wrong with an element of flexibility and compromise. After all what is the better outcome - keeping a job (after FAIR and JUST compromise or no job? I can already hear the comments that this post may trigger. One only has to visit other discussion forums run by both BA and Unite/Bassa to see the strength of feeling on this topic. I hope for everyone’s sake a mutually agreeable solution can be found but it does take give and take on BOTH sides.