I know I am going to get a lot of abuse for what I am going to say but hey I need to say it.
The Virgin Group and Virgin Atlantic are not the same. Virgin Atlantic will pay the Virgin Group money each year to use the brand name of VIRGIN. What the Virgin Group choose to do with the money they have has nothing to do Virgin Atlantic and the pay offers.
I recently went to an Onboard Managers Meeting and feel I need to share a few things with you that we were told by both VS Management and the Union reps who were at the meeting.
We can't compare ourselves to BA we are VS not BA. Lets look at the facts.
BA used to be a State Airline. Financed by the british goverment. They have much more assets and money that VS do.
BA have been around for many years 1924 they started as Imperial Airways. Some of us at VS were not even born when BA started flying. VS have been around for 23 years not long 1984.
BA have a very loyal customer base. BA have a very safe product image.
VS has an image of young and fun which some people do not like.
BA crew have been unionised for almost 40 years. VS crew have been unionsed for 6 years. Our union can't just go in there demanding massive pay deals and things like that they need to get a good relationship going and then things go better for us.
BA have 236 Aircraft with 52 on order. They fly to 222 destinations. We have 38 Aircraft and fly to 30 destinations.
So BA and VS are not the same by far and we should not compare ourselves to them.
Ok here are some more things you may find intresting.
VS are giving VK (Virgin Nigeria) a few more months and are going to then consider pulling the plug. Yes it is costing us money and they know that.
If we strike VS will not survive if the strike goes on for more than 7 days. We will run out of cash. In other words we all loose our jobs.
If we vote no to this offer they can't offer anything else there is nothing else to offer.
If we then vote no to the strike VS can and will then come back to us with the 2% that the rest of the company was given.
They know that they made a big mistake in only budgeting for 2% for crew pay increase. They also know that they should have listened to what crew wanted months ago. What they don't understand is that recently they went and spoke to crew and what we the crew were saying we wanted they have given us now and were still not happy.
We are only making on average 2p profit per passenger.
The open skies that will come into force early 2008 will either make or break us. The next 10 years will either see VS grow or fold up.
They know they have spent money on the base and the clubhouse and A/C but we all know that we need to spend to keep up with the the rest out there. We needed to base we are going to rent parts of it out to other airlines and make money from it.
Before anyone says it. I am NOT someone from the office. I am a CSS and want a decent pay rise but we have to be realistic.. VS have now met us and we need to VOTE YES or this time next year you may not be working for VS as we won't be around. For your own sake and everyone else that works at VS VOTE YES.
They woudl like to pay us more but the simple fact is there is no money to do that. We seen results for the last 10 years and there is nothing fishy going on. Think about it. Grab what we can now and then we can all get on with the jobs we love and look forward to the many years of enjoyment of working at VS. If you don't like that idea then maybe you need to look at other airlines/jobs. We work 900 hours a year. How many hours does your average person work a year. A lot more than 900.