Whilst I generally agree with the basic stance that is being taken by the BACC due WW’s obvious Trojan Horse tactics, I think people like Tandem are not making it easy for union HQ in dealing with this with their comment regarding the prospects of anyone who might be “foolish” enough to apply to this company.
Once the lawyers start, the status of a group of staff in a subsidary relative to those in the parent company and the so called “clear blue water” is likely to become very muddy, particularly if one group is facing a redundancy situation. The term “mainline” is unlikely to have much meaning in court and any attempt to shed one group of staff when another part of the organisation is recruiting for the same role would not be impossible, but it would be difficult. BA managed to get round this to some extent with BAcon by “selling”
it as a going concern, but they were very much aware that as a solvent company continuing recruiting externally, that they would have significant legal difficulties just dumping a bunch of pilots regardless of whether they were in a subsidiary. This latest development will be very awkward for BALPA too if they don’t stick solidly to basic principles. If that means going nuclear 
then so be it, but they need to be decisive.
If I had legitimately applied for and been accepted for a job with a BA company funded and equipped by BA managed by BA Directors and was then shortly afterwards dumped due to some totally predictable “industrial development”, I would certainly be expecting my union (including NEC members who happened to be on the BACC) to fight for my colleagues and my own right to continuous employment within that group of companies ahead of external recruits, regardless of whether I was on a master seniority list.
Big BALPA have some skilled negotiators who I am sure will be will be well aware of the need to represent all pilots caught up in this. Some comments here suggest that the BACC alone have the sole discretion to waiver BA’s selection system if and only when it suits them to achieve some particular political aim. Either the full recruitment process is vital and must be maintained for anyone going on the BA list, or it must be scrapped particularly for anyone already working in the same role within the group already flying Group owned aircraft.
Statistically, a good 75% of the BACon pilots would have failed to pass the tests. Would this have meant that they were all unsuitable to do the same job in a different part of the company? Personally, in most cases, I think not. The BACC has to make its mind up though and either go with the demands of those who are obsessed by Clingons and watering down the brand, or not support any further attempts by management to divide and create further prejudice amongst a group of professional workers. BA at the same time should also make its mind up for once and accept form the start that if it wants to buy or create a new airline operation then the crews that go with the deal are either fit for purpose from day one, or they are not. If there is any doubt then the deal should not proceed, they can't just keep making it up as they go along. It is not the job of a union either to help perpetuate unpleasant prejudices between groups of professionals doing the same job, something in which in my view, they have been guilty of until now.
In the case of BACon, there appeared to be a significant number of people on the BACC not to mention management who had an “over my dead body” approach to relaxing entry criteria even though they were of course happy to turn a blind eye to accepting 30 or so Bacon RJ 100 pilots only, without any form of selection, just because it happened to fulfil a short term aim. It didn't go unnoticed that the Scope enforced secondees in Bacon became known through out the company (BA) to have ended up in one of the most highly paid and cushiest SH posts in the company and this sort of thng wasn’t missed by the likes of WW. More ill though out secondment fudges like this will not help in the long term.
Tempers may be frayed, but I think TR, HR and others should tone it down for a while (in public) until the big meetings come to their natural conclusion. BA learnt quite a lot about what they could or could not get away with in the five years it took them to asset strip the LHR slots and then shed BACon, but they also learnt that some things weren’t quite as simple as they thought they would be
.
Last edited by biddedout; 20th Jan 2008 at 13:51.