To all those having a pop at groundstaff and what they are currently earning,i will try and "enlighten" you as to the reasons why!
Within BA engineering,on the ramp side,we are currently short of,(depending on which manager you talk to), between 50 and 100 engineers,to successfully run the T4/T5 operation!. This is due to many factors ie retirements/people leaving for other careers etc. Initially management tried to "firefight this problem using TOIL,(time off in lieu),until they realised that many staff had "banked" so much time off, that it became a non viable solution!. Couple this with the problems encountered with the baggage operation, where cost cutting has left BA short of baggage handlers etc and the following scenario is now occuring on an almost daily basis......BA now has engineers working overtime carrying out baggage handling,(deemed essential as late/lost bags is bad
PR) ...whilst other engineers are now doing overtime covering for the engineers doing baggage handling!!...crazy or what!
In the past this situation could have been alleviated somewhat by using hangar based staff to fill the shortfalls,but guess what,in another cost cutting move a few years ago the majority of hangar staff had thier HAL passes revoked in favour of a "less flexible" basic engineering pass.....HAL passes then costed about £100 each to set up plus the "Disclosure" element.
With regard to the hangar staff,overtime is a more or less long forgotten element of thier daily lives!....Here you get offered TOIL as a general re-imbursement and you have to dig your heels in to get offered paid overtime! Hence staff here,over the last few years, have become somewhat dissolusioned with the whole way the place is being operated and many have "jumped ship"
Nowadays it's not unusual to see an aircraft sit on a stand at base for long periods as there are simply no staff available to work it,nor is it strange to see two guys trying to change a GE90 on thier own!
BA corporately has simply cut back too far with regard to certain elements of it's staff and my personal fear is that this situation is only going to get worse!
Too few are now too stretched in order to run the operation and meltdown cannot be far away if the present trends continue!