British Airways - CC Industrial Relations & Negotiations

[HiFlyer14]

I am a firm believer that New Fleet was a complete hoax. Ever since that letter was found on a hot summer’s day on the photocopy machine, BASSA have been in a spin. WW never wanted New Fleet – it would have been too costly to administer. He wanted New Entrant Contracts, and the only way they could achieve it was to let the Unions believe that they have offered it.

I now think that there are a lot of other things in BA’s list that are red herrings. Why else did they leave it so late to present their list and then immediately call ACAS. I don’t think BA ever wanted to negotiate with UNITE – historically the relationship is just too fraught and he knew it would never succeed.

The only way to achieve his list was to lead UNITE to believe they were in control, then do the negotiating with ACAS there to mediate.

Look how quickly they dropped New Fleet. Look how suddenly MBTs are not required.
The reduction of days off on EF are a complete red herring – people on EF are having sometimes two non-op days a week! BA haven’t got the work for EF crew and bringing them in on a day off won’t save a penny. What they do need is Fixed Links, so that they can turn their aircraft round quickly and save millions. How can they get it when they know BASSA have already refused it? Threaten to take away their days off then negotiate back to fixed links. Brilliant!

Look at the other forums. Is anyone complaining about the reduced crew complement? No – they are complaining about CSDs working and the Fixed Monthly Duty Payment.
How easily BA are going to be able to bring in the crew complement reduction – by diverting attention on to other matters that they don’t even want.

Unite have now recognised that we MUST change. They have acknowledged the need for permanent change by offering 767’s to EF etc.

The sensible and only thing to do now, is to negotiate with ACAS present on each and every point on both lists. The membership (not the Senior Stewards) need to decide which item from either list is acceptable and then agree in order to achieve the desired savings.

BASSA have made this personal – just look at the questions to vote on yesterday:

1) do you accept Ba proposal?
All no

2) do you accept unite proposals
6 no all other yes

3) do you wish unite to make further concessions to Ba?
Answer no from all

It’s war – it’s simply BA vs BASSA.

What about another option? What about making a list of all the concessions and deciding which ones we CAN agree, or concede?

We need to negotiate now, to achieve the best possible outcome. If we don’t then we are going to end up with the worst of both worlds – BA’s proposals and UNITE’s clumsy offerings. Not a good combination.