If the 17,000 jobs were carefully chosen from the right areas then you would see no difference whatsoever to the product, except that it would improve significantly, the profits would surge, and the yields, and the revenue, and the share price whilst the costs fall.
BA turns over £9bn a year of which £3bn is staff costs. Sack 17000 out of 63000 (yes, it is still 63000 because the 7200 ‘Man power equivalents’ that were announced last year are all
still employed on full pay and in fact is likely to be closer to 6500) that suggests to me an immediate saving of £809m. Together with the improved efficiency of less people interfering with the smooth running of the operation and I think those savings could easily reach £1bn.
At the very foundation of BA the core assets are the slots they own at LHR and to a lesser extent LGW. Any retreat from shorthaul on the scale forecast by the ‘
return to BOAC’ scenario would entail surrendering many hundreds of slots that would no longer be used and hence by statute be required to be surrendered. Since only days ago we suggested that 224 slots was too high a price to pay for a strategy that some believe would have been this company’s salvation, then it would hardly be consistent to give hundreds more away in the Future Size and Shape review.
I can only deduce that the horror stories of Armageddon for pilots and cabin crew are being circulated by those who are shortly to find themselves on the street. They are apparently acutely aware that the commercial world has no place for Paper Fastening Systems executives, Pot Plant Position Psychics, Cappuccino Consumption Consultants and Management Structure Management Systems managers.
I personally hope that at last we might finally have realised at the eleventh hour the error of our ways, and the FSS review will be the referral for major surgery that we need to remove these malignant cancerous people from our midst and set us on the road to recovery. Every fellow employee I speak to seems to know what’s wrong and what is required to fix it. I can’t believe that the five wisest men in the company could be uniquely myopic.
Good luck everyone. <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">
. .edited for bile and vitriol
[ 03 February 2002: Message edited by: Roobarb ]</p>