Originally Posted by
Maus
Perhaps it is in your OWN experience that the "bad old days never went away". I work a lot on the Upper Deck and I have almost always enjoyed a good relationship with the flight crew - of course there are a few bad apples, but aren't there everywhere? I try not to take it personally and tar the entire flight crew community with the same brush.
I've worked places in BA where the "bad old days" never even existed. It's purely an LHR thing and particularly bad on long haul.
I must say: it is the first time I have come across the purported LGW training methods. As I have no first-hand knowledge, I can only assume that it is either part of the rumour mill or an isolated case (perhaps ANOTHER person with an axe to grind?). If those allegations were even slightly true, I think that's all pretty sad really.
Sadly not an isolated case. There have been numerous incidences, enough for senior Flight Ops management to have to take the heads of SEP and Customer Service training to task over the issue. They've been warned they are being watched......
It does seem wholly reasonable to me, with regard to the bus and the car park, that majority rule would dictate that 11/15 people should be catered for before the remaining 2.
It is questionable whether the majority would be going to the car park on a B2B anyway, but that was not the defence BASSA employed. They simply said "thats the way it was, thats the way it will be", so we are faced with the ludicrous situation where the bus drives past the car park, round the block to the hotel where it waits for ten minutes while 8 cabin get off and do their air kisses, then drives back round the block to the car park where the remaining 7 cabin crew and 2 pilots get into their cars to drive home. Sensible teamwork?
And I imagine that it would be fair to ask that a CSD also be upgraded should the flight crew get upgrades.
Couldn't agree with you more. The hotel contracts actually state that should the hotel be upgrading (at no cost to BA) then it should be done in the order Captains, FOs, CSDs. So, you can imagine our surprise when BASSA reps start appearing in hotel lobbies telling their staff they cannot upgrade the FOs if they are not upgrading the CSD also. Or CSDs start making a scene demanding an upgrade because the FO has one and BASSA says that the agreement demands they get one too (strangely, BASSA are the only people who claim to have seen this agreement, and cannot produce a paper copy or even the minutes of a meeting where this was 'agreed').
We have saved the company money in ways that are not entirely quantifiable: .......
Your examples are all very admirable. The problem is that savings like those are a drop in the ocean, they are not even of the same order of magnitude as those truly required. How many bottles of wine does that save per flight, and how does that compare with the pay differential between main crew and purser on that flight? What does it cost to delay a 747 for 30 mins while we wait for the QRS? How many washbags can you buy with the sum of the payments for working one down? These are the big savings Willie wants, but BASSA seem to think he'll be content with saving a bottle of salad dressing from each Club tray. They now appear to be very concerned that BA haven't folded on the strength of the ballot result and almost surprised that he might be spoiling for a strike!
Those stairs and baggage "slope" outside Compass are treacherous (don't laugh: YOU do it in heels!), but we grudgingly negotiate them when using the BA1 service (now that the Central Area bus service has been withdrawn) and during back-to-backs;
You have cabin shoes don't you?
On a serious note, the BA1 is coming back, but the demand for its return is symptomatic of some of BASSAs issues. If people choose to live in far flung provinces and commute into LHR then it isn't really BAs job to provide a dedicated bus. It's nice if they do but it's not really a strike issue if they don't.
I think you'll also find that with the airlines that pay their crew peanuts, many of them are on the fiddle: I have never had the "pleasure" of working for a charter company (yet?), but I have many colleagues who have, and who swear that it is the rule rather than the exception to cook the books on the selling of alcohol, and that they were used to seeing everything that wasn't nailed down disappear from the aircraft, something at BA, that would be unthinkable.
Serious allegations which do, I'm afraid, colour an otherwise reasonable post. Virgin aren't on the fiddle. I doubt Britannia, Monarch et al are on the fiddle either. I've seen plenty of room parties on Eurofleet where there were a suspiscious number of miniatures that didn't come from crew purchase so I know plenty of stuff gets nicked from BA too. Pint of milk here, couple of gins there. It goes on.
We KNOW we are going to get shafted, but at least we are putting up as much of a fight as we can - if we didn't, YOU would be writing in 6 months time about how we "agreed" to the conditions and "signed up to them". The only reason we have the conditions we enjoy at LHR, is sheer numbers and a stubborn union.
It didn't have to be that way were in not for Mike Street opposing any serious reform to his empire for about ten years. Now the target is too fat and too juicy to be overlooked. Its the elephant in the savings room and people can't ignore it any longer. Several of the conditions you currently have were signed up to by BASSA, like EG300 and the new contract pay scales. However it seems that when BASSA sign up to something and they don't like it it's BAs obstinance thats to blame (they still claim talks on the new pay scale have been going on for ten years - they were over and done with when BASSA signed the deal in 97!). It contrasts interestingly with their repeated slating of the flight crew, about how we sold out on EG300 (err so did they), how we sold out for money on the hourly rate and now we regret it(the vast majority don't and did rather well out of it) and numerous other examples. They like to portray themselves as the last bastion of the oppressed cabin crew, holding out whilst all around betray them. The reality is that all around have been negotiating sensibly and transforming the way they work with a bit of give and take whilst BASSA have been pulling up the drawbridge. This siege mentality is, I fear, going to lead a lot of our more moderate and valuable crew into an industrial catastrophe that they didn't want and cannot win.