Originally Posted by
AIMINGHIGH123
I will state I am not at BA however seniority is ideal for them as it keeps salaries down.
Banking used to be very much do your time to earn the big salaries etc. That all changed 20-30 years ago people very rarely stay with one financial institution as they get head hunted and often double there salaries in the process.
Now I know we have many many low hour cadets to fill the RHS and yes the industry gets hit by the smallest thing but experience has always been an issue. BA have created the perfect environment for people to stay get comfortable and a lovely roster after 15+ years so they are going nowhere. If these people were to suddenly start leaving BA would be screwed. It’s not just BA of course but every airline that has seniority. If seniority wasn’t around and people were happy to chop and change taking that experience with them there’s only one way to stop that happening £££££££.
Yes you can have some sort of loyalty but IMO having the ability to go from one airline to another and maintain your rank and current salary would push airlines to offer better packages.
I actually agree with a lot of that, seniority systems help to suppress wages for sure. Your seniority number has a £ value at the end of the day. But the issue now is how would you introduce a new system now into an airline like BA without there being many “losers” in the fallout? Also there is the added issue of job (in)security. Who in their right mind would bid for a 777/380/LGW command in a non-seniority system knowing in the very next downturn their job is toast? Seniority has major flaws but also brings with it some element of security. Sadly that means those at the bottom of the list in this, the biggest of all industry downturns ever, have had some dreadfully s****y bad luck and an unimaginably awful couple of years. There’s no perfect system and no nice way to deal with downturns/redundancies at the end of the day.