Hand solo,
After 5 years under BA mismanagement, no one from BACON would now fail to understand why you are going down this road, but calling the BACON reps naïve is rather patronising. What some BA reps and in particular RH didn’t seem to understand or acknowledge at the time was that BACON was a collection of smaller companies from all sorts of backgrounds, some unionised and others just crawling out of the benevolent mill owner culture. We had only just gained recognition, membership levels weren’t high and we had a bunch of BA Managers parachuted in spinning for England with one major aim, to destroy BALPA within BACON.
The offer of seats on the RJ from the BACC with promises that this was just a foot in the door appealed to some (RJ FO’s mainly), but the vast majority of RJ Captains had little interest in going into Mainline. The CC would have been slaughtered if they had gone for a deal which only benefited a small proportion of the workforce. Clearly, the foot in the door and promises of more jam tomorrow would have come to nothing. It would have been a bit like BA saying we will open up the pension scheme again, but only for ex Concorde and Tristar pilots. Can’t imagine the rest of the BA pilots being impressed by that sort of deal. The CC received very little criticism from within apart from one or two FO’s who were probably more interested in their own desire to get into BA than for the collective good. Membership levels increased from that point onwards.
As for the creation of 130 jobs, not strictly true. The original plan was for 60 secondees LHS RJ and only a few commands for BACON. With pilot turnover in BACON so high 20%+, and with 30 BA cadets on our books ready for return, there were ways of reducing the impact of Beeching-Evan’s rapidly expanding base closing program. If we had actually got to the point where BACON had to announce pilot redundancies rather than just fudging the issue, then the Seconded would have gone back anyway and it would have been interesting seeing how BA dealt with making redundancies in one part of the group whilst recruiting into another. Need to consider suitable alternatives etc….
Although many in BACON gradually began to understand the BA management tactics and accepted the point about seconded hanging onto what was originally theirs, like some of the Cabin Crew Unions, BACC and big BALPA could have been a little more proactive in helping deal with Bacon’s base closures by encouraging BA to accept the transfer of pilots into Mainline. All the cabin crew from the closure of GLA, PLH and SOU were offered LHR ahead of external applicants. Why not the pilots?
The biggest issue was dealing with so many demoted Captains due to base closures. Even if the former BAR pilot’s arguments about our work our aircraft had merit, flying former BACON training captains as FO’s in the RHS alongside was far form ideal and shame on BA for setting up such a situation and in particular for constantly using 9/11 as an excuse for absolutely everything.
The fact was that with the exception of a few routes, the loads on the BAR 737’were generally dreadful. We know, we positioned on them. Something had to change and having bought BACON a year earlier, presumably for some logical reason, then BA should have invested in it just like the competition were investing in their own fleets. It turns out that the only form of investment was to bring in 12 RJ’s. Meanwhile, the rest of the fleets were being priced out of the markets through having to pay BA internal rates for mediocre handling and Mainline rates for redeployed Cabin crew. What a disaster.
SO going bck to Citi Flyer MK 2. It is ultimately BA’s responsbility, but through no fault of thier own, these people have an agreement hanging over their heads which in theory could see them out of work in two years. It’s all very well saying that BA will jus have to absorb it into mainline if it doesn’t invest in new equipment, but I think they may need some encouragement in doing this before they cobble together another half baked idea about spinning in off into yet another subsidiary just to get round scope. These people need answers now and it should be sorted out now, alongside OS.
Last edited by biddedout; 9th February 2008 at 10:00.