scoobydooo
I agree, you guys shoulg get yourselves unionised and you are in perfect position to do it now. You have seen what a shambles this has been. You have seen what Balpa achieved. So now you can design your union and go forward with this design finding the correct union for you.
I urge you to try and address this, now is the time to move forward, each and every department should have the right to be represented and the company saying this can only be as one unit seems in my eyes to be the company way off stopping it from happening.
After the mess cabin crew have just been through, I would say the last thing other areas of the company want is a union. And for those on here claiming it's a victory for cabin crew against Virgin - wasn't it you guys who were getting more and more in a panic as the strike approached when the realisation really started to set in about what striking really meant. I don't think we needed a crystal ball to predict was was going to happen. It was you guys who wanted the deal and went back in to talks (thankfully). On another forum you were all saying about getting talking to the reps and talking to Brian Boyd again because you wanted the removed deal that you last rejected put back onto the table and that you would now accept it. After all, you had 2 deals recommended to you and I'm damn glad you eventually saw the light.
This to me seems to be what has happened. Ok, conditions may have been removed but I wouldn't be feeling so smart. A lot of grief has been caused and a lot of bridges need to be rebuilt in the company, and commercially for the passengers who may have lost faith in the brand, switched accounts to other airlines etc. I for one agree you should have a decent pay packet but there's ways of going about achieving it - and I don't think the last few sorry months was the right way.
I just hope that when your next pay discussions take place, you will have learnt a lot from this whole sorry saga. And by the way, Virgin Atlantic doesn't just revolve around the cabin crew to keep the aircraft flying - there's a whole lot more people behind the scenes that keep this show on the road each day and they work just as hard as the next person.
Lets just hope things are better in 2008 for us all. Happy flying!
