Bit of a long post, bear with me.......
So I'd say the redundancies are purely "political" and could have been avoided.
Lets say we're losing to CR 270 pilots basically on LIFO (assuming almost no one has conduct issues, and very few have performance issues).
So 270 x 50,000 salary = 13.5 million a year. (50,000 chosen as whilst some will be pay point 1 or 2 DEPs, many of these will be self sponsored or future pilot programme, so their basic is not a lot more than 30k,)
Well 13.5 million is only just over half a day's cash burn (according to Willie) so point 1 is that it will hardly save the company.
Point 2 - Flight Ops did not avail themselves of any of the Government's money through the Job Retention Scheme (furlough). Now regardless of whether BA decided to "top-up" as they did with Cabin Crew etc, the fact of the matter is that they could have easily furloughed 3000+ pilots (given the flying programme to date) for up to 8 months, so:
3000 pilots x 2500 per month x 8 months = 60 million direct to BA from the Government "for free".....
That's the 270 CR pilot's salary for 4.4 YEARS!!!
So if we'd used the Government money, we could've afforded to keep these 270 pilots on for the next 4.4 years! Makes you think doesn't it!!!
And now a couple of questions...
Question 1 - So we are putting 300 in a Community Retention scheme at a cost to the remaining pilots of circa 8%.... What then happens if there are further redundancies required in the future in the event of passenger traffic not recovering... Do the new redundancies (mainly more senior than the CRS 300) get pushed out to compulsory redundancy, or do they replace the 300 in the CRS? There's no right or wrong answer, but has it been considered? I don't think it has!
Question 2 - Given the CRS is likely to be including a fair number of "surplus" Captains, the "cost per head" in the CRS is likely to be quite high. Given the 270 redundancies are likely mainly pay point 1 or 2 SSPs and FPPs with a few pp1/2 DEPs, surely the extra cost of including them in the CRS could've only been an extra 2-3%? So would we have been willing to make the "cost" of the CRS 10-11% instead of 8%? Especially as it should reduce over time I would think most would say yes?
Question 3 - Why do we have just CRS and compulsory redundancy? Why not have the 300 CRS and then when someone returns to BA there is a vacancy in the CRS for one of the pay point 1/2 ppl who's been made CR to at least get some funding? Ok it would mean the 8% doesn't drop, but given the CRS only runs for two years, again maybe we as a community would've accepted this?
Question 4 - What is there to stop a 55-60+ pilot taking CRS for up to two years (say from 747 fleet), being offered a course on another fleet and turning it down and deciding to retire? The pilot community will then have funding this person for two years when they knew they wouldn't return and just wanted to max their cash before retiring?
Sorry for the long post, but I do wonder if BALPA have fully thought this through? I find it interesting that the reps doing the negotiating have made very sure that their particular demographic (fleet, paypoint) is well looked after, even if it means some other demographics suffer!!! (But then wasn't that always the way with BALPA?)