SP,
When is BASSA going to wake up and look over its LHR fortress walls and see what is occuring in the real world.
Airlines are laying off staff all over the world. The recession is hitting airlines particularly hard as, with the dramatic rise in oil prices showed, we as an industry, are open to the foibles of many, many other sectors of the business community.
Why should BA land be any different? Why, when other airlines are shedding jobs, cutting routes, grounding aircraft and scrabbling for bank loans should BA be making it all up?
The final salary pensions schemes were killed when Robber Brown started reneging on the tax incentives put there to safeguard future accruals by the Conservative government. GB's 'safe hands' approach to the UK economy was fuelled by pension fund tax rapes. Sad but true. Now, in the coming post New Labour utopia, the country is broke, pension funds are broke and we, as tax payers, have to carry the burden of the £1.2 Trillion Government pension fund? Fair, nope. Taxing the future generations before they are born? Yep.
The Government must sort out the pension funds for the Public Sector but that is another debate. Who and why should private funds be guaranteed? How can the tax payer be expected to pay into a private fund and guarantee it at the same time? If a private pension fund has no money in the pot, ala BA, then it needs to be closed to both future and current employees before the deficit kills the company.
Unfortunately your posts over the past weeks have shown a tunnel mentality where the word owes BASSA a favour and BASSA can live and exist outside the general rules of business.
No, it can't. It is about time that the leadership (sic) of BASSA recognised that and started to represent their members and not just themselves.