Thanks Mick,
There was a cartoon a few years ago depicting BA managers in a rowing boat. There were ten manager/cox's and one person rowing.
When Marshall and King took over, BA was in its heyday. They employed a guy called Mike Levine, a New York Jew who had been involved with People Express. He did a big hatchet job on the management at BA. People came back to their offices on a Monday morning and found the key no longer worked the door lock. All their personal possesions were on the floor outside! And you never guess what? Aircraft still took off and landed. The loss of all these managers didn't make a blind bit of difference to the operation. So what were they all doing?
It was only after this clear out that BA made the huge profits that it as taken twenty years to reciprocate. Rod Eddington called BA management "permafrost".
Now we have managers managing Pursers, who try to justify their position by stating that they have reduced sickness. The problem now is BA is so short of cabin crew, they are having to cancel services. They have reduced the headline number of crew so that there are not enough to cover the operation at certain times of the month, due to part time contracts.
Unfortunately for our customers, it is always the front line staff that are squeezed and cut to the bone. I have often heard that we do not have enough engineers, pilots, check in staff, cabin crew, but we have never been short of managers!