Oh dear, what a mess you cabin crew have got in to, if the company had actually railroaded any of your (mostly ludicrous) payments and agreements you would have a point because these form part of your contract of employment.
BA hasn’t though have they? They are making a few legitimate changes in an attempt to get the magic 10% operating margin that the company needs to SURVIVE.
I notice the crew put up a smoke screen to try and hide how good you have it, remember a lot of us here are not stupid and we know what is going on.
My sister in law is LHR shorthaul and my brother is a longhaul Purser.
He does clear over 3K some months what with back to back payments, destination payments, one down payments and overtime payments.
Shorthaul wages are more respectable but look at how much you work, I know you have long days but these are all due to you having to be bussed back to compass for 2 and a half hours plus between flights, for shorthaul if you add up your actual flying hours (block time spent on the aircraft) over a month you average 51 verses 80 for pilots, that’s 63%, so a shorthaul pilot on a 75% contract still works harder than a full time crew member. To do an annual comparison my sister did 493 flying hours last year including some overtime, most pilots are 800-850.
Take your £1700 monthly wage and multiply by about 1.65 to get a realistic equivalent wage.
It’s not so bad then really is it?
Remember it’s your union agreements that keeps the inefficiency going and that’s what rattles BA. If BASSA ever showed any flexibility in keeping the operation going then you would't have the parent-child relationship that now exists.
Now having said all that nothing is changing, you are NOT loosing any money, all the payments stay, you will still keep doing 500 hours per year, you still keep the 1-2-1 trips (and please don’t tell us these are rare, we see your rosters, there are 2 files full of them on top of your drop files in compass), I would urge all pilots and ground staff to go and have a thumb through and see for yourself how little actual FLYING is on them as opposed to actual duty hours.
I don’t want to see you stripped of money or given awful rosters like easyjet and you aren’t!!! I don’t want to see you all miserable, I don’t want you to have to leave. Just please realise that you have something amazing and due to the inflexibility of BASSA from the 70’s you cost the company a fortune.
All the company is asking is that you actually work for what you are paid and not go sick every sunny weekend / Ascot / Wimbledon / Christmas / Lagos / Kuwait etc etc (don’t deny it, some crew actually brag about it!)
If the payscales are unfair then help each other out and merge them not just demand an increase, sure the top guys would take a cut but it would end up fair, and that’s what you want isn’t it? It worked for the pilots, a linear scale with hourly meal pay AND an hourly flying pay in lieu of box payments and the wage bill stayed exactly the SAME.
Please don’t believe the BASSA hype, please don’t destroy this airline, at least not until you actually have something real to strike about.
Please come to work, you will be supported and most of you would be very surprised at how many of your colleagues have no actual intention of striking anyway.
There, my first rant.
Last edited by plodding along; 23rd Jan 2007 at 08:36.