This is doing the rounds, make of it what you will but I think it pretty much hits the nail on the head.
This arrived from a friend this evening, it’s brilliant and she wants it to go viral, it pretty much says it all. Worth getting out there, send it to your other halves, friends, family, everyone. Perhaps the press will pick it up:
“My husband is a senior British Airways captain with over 30 loyal, devoted years of service with the airline. Middle class, solidly Home Counties, and precisely the person whose gentle tones you long to hear upon boarding a British Airways aircraft at the end of an arduous business trip in some moth-eaten corner of the world.
As soon as his mellow, Radio 2 voice, and his “Good evening and ladies and gentlemen “ welcome aboard announcement comes across the PA system, you feel safe and warm, cocooned in the knowledge that for the next however many hours, you are secure in the hands of a consummate professional and his crew.
Your subconscious immediately tries to picture him: a man in his late forties or early fifties, who, at the end of the flight, will no doubt fire up his trusty Volvo estate and drive home to his wife, 2.4 children, and ageing labrador or golden retriever. You might even meet him for a pint in the village local that evening.
You recline into your premium cabin seat, order a G&T, and in your head at least, you’re already back in Blighty as the careworn palm trees whip past your window and the plane rolls along the runway on its takeoff path. That’s my old man, the quintessential BA skipper.
Slice him in half, and you’ll discover the BA logo running through him like a stick of Brighton rock.
I cannot begin to list how many times he has gone above and beyond for his colleagues, passengers and employer.
Always the first to board, and the last to disembark, regardless of how exhausted he might be.
A passenger in need of assistance? He’s there like a shot.
A late wheelchair on arrival back at base? He’ll send everyone home and stay with the passenger until one eventually turns up, which these days can sometimes be an hour or more, not the ideal conclusion to a long night flight.
Crew member taken ill down route? He’ll accompany them to hospital and keep in regular contact until he’s satisfied that they’re ok and all relevant parties have been notified.
Duty. Honour. Responsibility. Decency. Solid British Airways characteristics, or at least they used to be.
BA is his life, and in spite of me telling him for years that his spaniel-like fidelity would always go unrecognised (how right I was), he has stubbornly put his unswerving duty to “The Company” ahead of any other commitments to family or friends.
Now we fear the worst, and fully expect that Messrs Walsh and Cruz will stab him in the back in grateful recognition of his many years of blind loyalty.
COVID-19 is manna from heaven for IAG and the BA board: an opportunity for the company to divest itself of those employees who still enjoy the relative luxury of a half-decent contract and working conditions.
Make no mistake. Henceforth, ALL British Airways employees will be working on minimum salary contracts, with little job security and the cheapest and worst working conditions legally allowable.
“Don’t like it, Captain X? Shove off and we’ll have you replaced within a month...”
Fills one with pride to Fly the Flag, does it not?
BA has the cash reserves to come to a better and infinitely more humane solution than to sack 12,000 employees who would, I am in no doubt, be prepared to work for a reduced salary, thereby reducing costs and meeting the shortfall by sharing out the workload.
The snag with that plan, however, is that IAG, WIllie Walsh and Alex Cruz would lose this never-to-be-repeated-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which offers them the chance to get rid of their more expensive employees under the cover of crisis.
It’s a gift horse not to be ignored.
Equally, for BA to accept a very cheap government loan would open the door for Virgin, it’s most bitter of rivals, to do the same, thereby giving it the opportunity to find possible salvation.
Walsh and Cruz have therefore concluded that, rather than give their UK opponents any chance of survival, it is preferable to throw their most loyal people to the wolves, and then replace them in a few years with far cheaper labour.
Two birds with one stone. Job done. Management bonuses and Veuve Clique all round.
And there, in a nutshell, is the brutal reality of the “we’ll come out of this a better society”, post-COVID world.
Gone are the gentlemanly days of Lords King and Marshall, who took it upon themselves to actually give a damn about their employees, and who, in return, were admired and respected by the workforce.
Today it is the Wolves of Harmondsworth in charge; they have scented blood and are going in for the kill.
Far from emerging from COVID into a kinder, more understanding place, we will discover that the vultures and hyenas who run our biggest companies will use today’s climate to slice, dice, and butcher their best people in the manner of the most brutal Wuhan wet market.
If you thought things became cutthroat after 2008-9, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Bottom dollar business, to hell with humanity, and let’s screw whoever we can, (as we have for many years), only now, we have the perfect excuse.
Morals? Decency? Respect?
Only if there’s a profit to be made.
I leave it to you to decide whether that is a reality which you wish to inhabit.
Or a flag you wish to fly.
We’ll take more care of you? Judge for yourself.”