Da Dog said:
QRS, Its taken over 11 years for the post 97 crew to be 50% of the total cabin crew. At a time when BA had high growth and high turnover of staff (4.2%) because people had other jobs to go to. Its now no growth and very low turn over because people don't have other jobs to go to.
Bill Francis has turned down BASSAs offer of New Crew joining existing fleets for several reasons not least that it would take a similar number of years, as Da Dog describes above, to achieve any significant cost savings.
Additionally, the New Crew on new T and Cs will still work the same trip structure as existing crew albeit with reduced MBTs (days rest after trip). This also impacts on the ability to save money by, for example, not giving BA the trip length flexibilty they require: nightstop LAX, SFO and so on.
I say again that an entirely New Fleet with mixed flying is what WW is 'determined' to see introduced. It gives BA complete flexibility over the whole, admittedly small in the beginning, operation.
Where do you get that you will be 10K a year worse of?? That is a lot of box payments.
IMHO, in time, the amount of work that is retained by the existing fleets will dwindle and with it all variable elements of pay. Box payments, over-time, allowances. There may even come a time when existing crew are barely working which could therefore cost the individual a high % of their variable earnings e.g. £10,000.
The company are offering a matrix of routes to be transferred to minimise the impact on crews average earnings.
Bill Francis claims his 'intention' is to transfer work to the New Fleet via a matrix and as existing crew leave at the current rate of 'around 2%.' I don't buy that for several reasons. Not least:
1. Reducing a headcount of 13000 by half would take 34 years at an attrition rate 2% p.a.
2. Any sign of an upturn in the business will allow Bill or his successor to change the key driver of New Fleet to growth and expansion of the airline.
I believe the proposed reduction in crewing levels will impact on customer service levels/standards. At some point in the future BA may well concede this to be the case.
Also, when the opportunity arises and sufficient numbers exist on New Fleet BA could quite conceivably transfer an enormous amount of work over and, as insufficient work remains for existing crew, push crewing levels back up rather than have them sat around doing nothing.
I agree that there are many other cost-saving options yet to be discussed but not as an alternative to New Fleet.