BA is overrun with Management Consultants, who teach that an angry and preferably divided workforce is easier to manage towards significant structural change in a unionised environment, especially if you can divide them from their union.
I have to congratulate Fred on smacking the nail right on the head.
The pinciple of "divide and rule" appears to be drummed in at BA management school nursery and no where more so is this policy more evident than in BACX where the same Absence management policy has arrived on the seemingly endless conveyor belt of nasty things.
The tortuous passage of CX from one failed business plan after another as management thrash first in one direction then another (variously chasing profit then excusing themselves for loosing again) contains shining examples of this tool which is enthusiastically applied at every opportunity by its BA managers.
Where is it written that for a company to be successfully lead you have to be nasty, manipulative and devious with your workforce?
These tools are the last resort of a management that either cares not or is totally inept at basic man management.
The worst of it is that in signing up to policies like this Balpa allow themselves to be an instrument of this philosophy. Cabin crew will have none of it, so why do they do it? The cynic might look at recent past history and wonder if there are not some gross conflicts of interest going on with senior management jobs being eyed up.
The fundamental problem with both BA and CX is a complete lack of strong and effective leadership and, as a result, a workforce that not only has no faith in them but, in large part actively despises them.
Far more so in CX than BA I suspect, there is universal contempt for its management and as a result complete puzzlement as to why despite failing to produce any return for BA (Its shareholder) time and time and time again the same managers are left in place.
Treating a workforce with respect and decently does not necessarily carry a fiscal tarif. Workforces by and large are intelligent as are their unions and know that there are bad times as well as good and that a company cannot insulate them from such reality.
A well lead workforce will do everything it can to support its management if it has earned respect being fair decent and open.
Therein lies the problem.
If the BA board wont do anything about it then its high time the City and the major institutions that invest in BA and CX had a long hard look at just exactly what is going on.