I am retired from BA. I feel for everybody in the aviation world facing massive uncertainty and potentially redundancy.
Assume the company either take loans or government help to keep everybody employed. How does that work given the consensus seems to be it will be a year or more before the aviation industry recovers and the scale of the recovery itself is open to debate? The cost of maintaining everybody in full employment is just not viable for more than a few months.
WW has been referred to as a psychopath. He probably has high psycopathic traits but then that is what makes effective leaders. People with high psychopathic traits can make decisions based purely on facts and logic with emotion not playing the slightest part in decision making. He will not make a decisions because it would be nice to keep everybody employed but will make decisions which ensure IAG/BA survives and is as fit as can be to deal with this worldwide disaster.
It doesn't alter the fact that advantage is being taken of the situation to address the legacy issues which have been a rope around BA's neck for years. This is not the time or place to argue about those issues but the unions have defended them for years. The opportunity is now seen to take an axe to them.
The above is not any sort of defence but an observation from my knowledge and experience of BA and WW.
Good luck to everybody facing such an uncertain and troubling future.