sevenfourseven: so you "profesionals" want to drag BA from the dinasour age hey. Thats funny! you must be about 1out of 4 pilots that actually agree with the system. Talking to many of you guys up the front, all I hear is bitching about the attendance system and how you are being far too over worked. Working to maximum scheme limits and feeling ill after a 4 day stint. However, not being able to call sick after you've come down with a cold and blocked ears as you may enter one of the various stages of the attendance policy. Attending a doctor to legally sign you off and then coming back to work thinking that you won't enter any stage of the policy. Only to find that it doesn't make a difference that you've managed to get a doctor's certificate to prove that you couldn't fly because of your cold and blocked ears. After all this, you still enter the process. Now that is what I call fair!!
We don't want to stop the proces coming in all together. Believe me, I'm all for it. I think it will reduce the sickness rate. However, it needs to be done in a fair and pratical way. We cannot be put into this one size fits all way of working. If we have an ear infection, we can't work as risk of bursting an eardrum will be exceptionally high. However, someone in an office can physically go to work and do their job. If anyone, regardless of their job, has a certificate from the doctor signing them off work, it shows that they are actually ill and should be warrented. Hwever, in your case, sevenfourseven, it isn't. This is what we are appealing against.
sevenfourseven, we are in the real world and I think it's time that some of you went to your own union and sort this mess that you have got yourselves into. We have seen what it has done to you guys, and wouldn't want it to be repeated. It's a unfair process that way it is now and needs to come in line with the "real world" way of working, as you say.