exeng,
I have not been in my current company to know about the gulf war pay cuts. If indeed you all did take a pay cut, and were not given any increases after the financial problems, then I would agree with you; That is not on. You should have been properly compensated.
However, I do not agree with you on the grounds of airline efficiency. Is it really advisable to use a measure of employees per aircraft? I think not. A short haul operation, mostly intra Europe, is not going to need as many employees as a long haul-intercontinental carrier. I think it is much more advisable to divide the number of employees by the total passengers, or indeed the total revenue passenger kilometres (RPK's a measure of how many passengers and how far). If you do this, then BA come out in a much better position. Out of interest, how would you rank size of airline. If we take your measure of number of aircraft, then southwest airlines beat BA...is it really bigger than BA? Using the same measure, Continental Express is half the size of BA...is this really the case? Would it be better to use a measure of RPK's. Interestingly enough, this is how airlines are actually measure for size!
You say that there are a lot of 'suits' at Waterworld & Compass. Why are you surpirsed? BA is a very large company (£6 billion turnover), and you would expect that! Also at the compass centre, you have staff that perform operational and planning tasks...are the schedules planners not neccessary then?
I think that Rod is going to be making cuts, and your correct, they will be on the 'suits' side. If you read my other posts, you will notice that I totally agree with that. You obvisouly have some grudge against a part of management, and have therefore deemed all management to be evil! I think this is sad, as if we all worked together, it would be a better place!