My name is Barry Courtney. I do not travel under a suedonim. I was paid as a pilot . If you are paid as a steward a stewardess a baggage handler or a manager , then so be it. you are paid for what you do. if you do not like it, then change your job.
Regards,
A very happy retireree.
Miss all my wonderful friends.
But today, look at CWL and over at the Base now, a squadron of -436's, 777's, 767's all parked up, yes, they are rotated to give the impression of maintenance but no one is taken in by that, they are aircraft that BA cannot fill. Ryanair and EasyJet are taking new delivieries every few day/week so whats different with them. How can do they survive and expand? Their cost basis is lower.
But BA is not Ryanair or EasyJet - they are a full service airline.
It's all very well saying that BA cabin crew are overpaid when compared to Ryanair & Easy, but then so are the Flight crew, check in, loaders management etc. etc.
all very well saying that BA cabin crew are overpaid when compared to Ryanair & Easy, but then so are the Flight crew, check in, loaders management etc. etc.
Yes, but it is the PROPORTION that is at issue. The CAA publish the data that BA cc cost about 30% more than the next most expensive cc, far more than any other staff group. BA also know that about 60% of the IFCE pay budget goes to only 25% of their staff. THAT is where the "overpaid" problem lies. If that 25% either take VR or are brought more into line with normal pay, then a lot of the cost savings are already achieved.
The remaining cc will still be the best paid in the uk, but the huge distortions that are currently present would disappear.
As I have said before, new contract main cc should not see ANY reduction in pay as a result of BA's proposals. They will just have to do a bit more work for it, that is all.
"rmac I agree not much indeed but plenty of your collegues who voted in favour of the deal you have earn more than 6 times that ."
wrote "Sudden Twang"
Not my deal ST, check my profile. I'm an impartial observer, however I do have a lot of M&A experience with struggling companies and can assure you that the biggest asset to be acquired is the human capital. Often the biggest problem in any failing business is non-core objectives of a top heavy management layer (or worse layers, plural ).
My first actions on acquiring a failing company centre on making sure that the bulk of income from operations is channeled to delivering the service that the income providers expect for the money they have parted with, if you provide sub standard service then the business is in a spiral dive.
Then I cut out everything that does not contribute to that goal, and I mean everything. All that remains is customer facing "need to have", some of the nice to have can be built back in at a later stage.
The only problem with this is that it cuts across most of the interests of the decision makers and committee members so it can only ever happen if the board of directors and CEO are committed to it. Often these very people have a lot of skeletons in their share options cupboards for which their middle management keep the keys. You can see the problem I think...
As an aside to the process, the unions are usually little better and can often be "bought off".
Whatever you do you are all hostages to fortune if you are at the service delivery end of the business. Industrial action will only tighten the spiral dive and hasten your end.
There are usually two outcomes, 1. The business goes to the wall and new buyers get the opportunity for a new beginning or 2. Activist shareholders are strong and smart enough (rare occurence) to appoint a new and radical executive team to take the necessary action, which usually begins with getting rid of a great proportion of the management layers.
You cannot compare Ryanair or EasyJet to BA as they run under totally different business models hence cost bases. Ryanair and Easy rely on expansion and new routes coupled with a very low cost base. Night stopping Ryanair or Easyjet crew anyone? Very rare.
I think you will find that BA has benchmarked, over the past couple of years, the Cabin Crew, loaders, pilots, ground handlers, managers etc, etc, etc against other legacy, full service LH/SH carriers such as AF/KLM, Virgin, Emirates, Turkish, United, AA, Delta etc. This will have been done for each years business plan to ensure that the managers are aware of where BA's staff costs are heading. That is after all what they are paid to do. BASSA seems to believe that BA has 'snapshot' the market. I find that very hard to believe. Whilst BASSA might not have done its homework, if it had it could well have seen a lot of the BA demands coming a long time ago, the BA management certainly have done theirs. This is why I, personally, fear for the BASSA membership.
Most departments will have adjusted themselves over the period to ensure that BA remains an 'attractive' place to work by offering market rate + 10%.
As BASSA have failed to adequately adjust the market rate of the CC over the past 10-20 years you can probably see where the comparative graph is heading.
Hence the reason for such a drop now.
There is no point in BASSA looking 'over the fence' at other departments. It really is about time that BASSA started looking inward to their own organisation and see that, whilst protecting the top 10% of CC, they have been neglecting the other 90% through inadequate future planning and representation.
If you want pilot wages and pilot T's & C's then go to Oxford and get a licence, reapply from the beginning as a pilot. You might be surprised what the starting wage actually is for a self sponsored pilot! Or indeed quite how difficult it is to get into BA as an 'Ab Initio', trust me you need to be very, very good. If you want to compare managers wages then put yourself on a rolling 12 monthly contract, achieve the performance related targets and, if you achieve above you might get a bonus, if you achieve below, no contract renewal!
BASSA needs to look inward, sort out its own internal failings and start looking after its members with honest open appraisals about what affects CC not what every other Tom, Dick and Harry are doing. Time to leave the playground BASSA and come and join the real world.
Quote:
There are usually two outcomes, 1. The business goes to the wall and new buyers get the opportunity for a new beginning or 2. Activist shareholders are strong and smart enough (rare occurence) to appoint a new and radical executive team to take the necessary action, which usually begins with getting rid of a great proportion of the management layers.
rmac,
Interestingly that seems to be the general City opinion of why Willie Walsh was brought in, for exactly this purpose. He has already culled a large swath of middle management and now wishes to rationalise the 'front line' which, to this day, is over crewed. He is hard nosed enough to push this all through and, as Openskies demonstrated, has the ability to explore all avenues to push his business plan through.
From friends who work in the City in some major financial institutions BA is, was and remains a good investment opportunity IF the company can reign in and ring fence some of the militant aspects of its core workforce. Without the ability to control disruption caused by external or internal factors then the investment will not come. Hence the deadline to get things done.
Last edited by wobble2plank : 7th July 2009 at 10:04.
As I understand it now, Bassa are working on a breakdown on how they achieved the £173M savings that was part of the proposal.
So, let me get this straight: They said that they could save £173M, but no costing or analysis. Now they are working on the breakdown to 'prove' the savings.
Er is it just me or is that the wrong way round? It seems to me that they are now frantically trying to make sums fit an answer they have already given!!!!
'Some say' that the proposals from BA were presented in their 'raw' format to the Kempton Park meeting.
As BASSA had, supposedly, been in 'intense' meetings with BA for the past 4 months from February, they don't seem to have changed many of the proposals? Or, indeed, even looked at them?
Please tell me that I'm wrong, but I've heard that some 'old school' cabin crew are on circa £60,000 a year...
Any truth in this?! Surely not!!
Congratulate your well informed friends for giving you such accurate info....they failed to mention that this figure is for those CSD's on a 50% contract, or was that 33%....
I think the actual suggestion is that the csd is actually required to help with the on-board service ie meals etc. Many of those outside BA will be unaware that they are not currently required to do so.
Indeed they will be amazed that the highest paid member of the cc is on board to fill in paperwork, meet and greet premium passengers and "manage" the service (ie work out the breaks).
Runway vacated - you just forgot to mention dealing with the crap onboard IFE system, placating premium pax who have been mishandled by BA, placating many non premium pax mishandled by BA, help in the CW service, etc, etc. And thats just the first few hours of EVERY flight.
...and not always the highest paid cabin crew member on board.
wobble2plank - you carry on believing just what you want to believe.
CFC, sorry but I don't understand what your point is?
Do you actually wish to add to the debate or just knock your head against the wall?
My point is that, throughout this entire affair, BASSA have misrepresented the majority of their membership. If you feel or know differently then please post a polite, sensible and reasoned answer which furthers the thread.
Otherwise you are not doing yourself any favours.
Now, on with the debate.
Quote:
Runway vacated - you just forgot to mention dealing with the crap onboard IFE system, placating premium pax who have been mishandled by BA, placating many non premium pax mishandled by BA, help in the CW service, etc, etc. And thats just the first few hours of EVERY flight.
...and not always the highest paid cabin crew member on board.
What about the gate staff who have to deal with irate pax, the check in staff dealing with pax with too many bags. The customer service staff and flight connection staff who deal, day in day out, with the 'irate' passengers.
It is part of the job.
As to the poor IFE, come sometimes and look at how our workload in the front goes up when we are faced with some of the harder Acceptable Deferred Defects (ADD) in the aircraft. No complaints as it is what we, as pilots, are paid to do.
Last edited by wobble2plank : 7th July 2009 at 11:11.
you just forgot to mention dealing with the crap onboard IFE system, placating premium pax who have been mishandled by BA, placating many non premium pax mishandled by BA, help in the CW service, etc, etc. And thats just the first few hours of EVERY flight.
And this differs from LGW how? They achieve the same level of service with 2 less cc and the cm is on A LOT less money. "Slave wages" is the term I believe?
Runway vacated - you just forgot to mention dealing with the crap onboard IFE system, placating premium pax who have been mishandled by BA, placating many non premium pax mishandled by BA, help in the CW service, etc, etc. And thats just the first few hours of EVERY flight.
Oh come on CFC, that is achieved by a working member of CC at nearly every other airline in the world (including BA at LGW) to say those duties require the presence of someone soley able to deal with them is just not tenible in today's aviation world. The guys and girls manage at my current airline without having an administrator under the stairs. Sergeant Major needed putting to bed a long time ago.
The CSD is a very useful member of crew if they choose to be and, in fact, when they do choose to be they could quite easily replace another crew member in the service.
"For some of you, more pay than Virgin Atlantic can afford may be critical to your lifestyle and if that is the case you should consider working elsewhere."
Richard Branson, December 2007
Substitute Virgin for BA and the quote above may become relevant. No-one is owed a living.
I am told the new LCY-SNN-JFK operation will allow the pilots a nice layover/nightstop in SNN, but the poor old CC will have to operate the complete flight.
Looks like the CC are keeping the ops cost as low as poss, the pilots less so.
CFC, sorry but I don't understand what your point is?
Do you actually wish to add to the debate or just knock your head against the wall?
My point is that, throughout this entire affair, BASSA have misrepresented the majority of their membership. If you feel or know differently then please post a polite, sensible and reasoned answer which furthers the thread.
Otherwise you are not doing yourself any favours.
Why do you not understand my point? Its pretty clear.
As for the Bassa comment I'll just re-emphasise:
wobble2plank - you carry on believing just what you want to believe.
with all due respect, and bare in mind I was at LGW for 6 years:
And this differs from LGW how? They achieve the same level of service with 2 less cc and the cm is on A LOT less money. "Slave wages" is the term I believe?
your above comments are slightly wrong. However do not believe me, just ask any premium pax who fly from both bases, or even some of our 777 FC who do the same. Taking nothing from my LGW colleagues, the lack of hands DOES make a big difference in-flight.
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