BYMONEK I certainly hear what your saying as in airline surviving, jobs for all etc etc.
But the fact is, what we the staff see at the moment is BA proclaiming itself the 'worlds most profitable airline' in the Daily Mail with annual profits of £525 million. I know there are financially minded people who will say this doesn't really mean anything, we are still in grave danger etc etc but to the average joe (like me!) that multi million pound profit speaks volumes. I know we still have to reduce our debt etc but with profits like this the company is going to have a real hard time negotiating cuts with BASSA and perhaps rightly so.
We (the cabin crew) all know where the cuts can be made. On long-haul on a 747 we have a CSD and 4 (four ) Pursers. Leaving lots of high salary chiefs and few indians.
I recently just came over from short-haul and we had the infamous CAT turnarounds paying 37 odd-quid and minimum 2.5 hour break times etc.
Believe me I din't want to be sat in the CAT lounge for an hour and a half before doing my next flight, or at Compass Centre for 2 hours. But this is the fact.....I needed to get every single 'allowence' I could get. My basic salary, before tax, pension plan etc is just over £800 a month . After tax, NI, pension etc it would probably leave me with about £680 take home. Do you know how far that goes in London? So you can see how imperative it is for the cabin crew to do all they can to protect their allowence structure as this generally makes up 50-75% of monthly take home pay.
Many of the pilots I know are generally mis-guided about our pay deal and the hourly rate deal we were offered. Most don't rabbit on in terms of spite I know, many generally feel we will be better off as we would receive a similar deal to the pilots. They tell us how we would all get an increase in our basic pay and how they put all the costs of the CAT turnarounds into a pot and divide it etc etc. This is false . We were NOT offered an hourly rate deal anywhere near like what the pilot community accepted. We were offered the hourly rate, and not a penny more in our basic pay. That was the end of it. The problem for BA was is that they told us what the hourly rate would be (and rightly so). So of course we were able to come home, and work out what we would receive with the hourly rate versus what we received with the current system. i can't speak for eveyone, but in my case I was losing £300-£500 per month . No-one is going to sign up for that.
I do believe BASSA needs to find a way forward with the company though. This should be where both the company and the crew benefit. I really think this will happen soon. For the first time we now have some BASSA reps who are on the 'new contract' so will raise some issues for us on the new contract who will hopefully be at BA in another 20 years time. I hope this gets sorted as BA has a real 'cabin crew hating' feel about it and it makes it difficult for us to move together as a team.
Finally, just in regards to the unions. BASSA and BALPA aren't some autonomous organisations being difficult or making stupid rules. The unions only comprise it's members and their views, ie YOU AND ME.