Just to let you know how WW sees things;
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Interview: Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways
Published: November 22 2009 23:02 | Last updated: November 22 2009 23:02
FT=Financial Times, WW=W.Walsh. My bolds.
FT: I guess the strike is what everybody wants to know about. Should people be cancelling their tickets, and have there been any developments today?
WW: No, but the issue is, as you know, they [the Unite union representing BA cabin crew] are just going through the balloting process at the moment, so people have been talking about this, assuming that everything is going to work out the way it has been written in the press, but we’ve got to wait and see. So I still believe there’s a long way to go.
We’ve introduced the changes. They came into effect on Monday. Crew are operating normally, doing a great job. No adverse reaction to the changes that we’ve introduced. Feedback both in terms of crew and consumers is perfect, so no... it’s as we thought. You know, there’s been no impact on customer service.
And I think it reinforces my view that these changes are changes that don’t actually have an adverse effect on the people working in the business, and won’t have an adverse effect on customer service, and yet are significant in terms of the value to British Airways.
I think they’re very fair, I think they’re reasonable, and I think it’s the minimum that we need to do to address what’s clear to everybody is a cost challenge within the business. So I’m confident we’re doing the right thing.
FT: Is it going to be similar to the 2007 strike situation where eventually you do end up settling?
WW: No, it’s not. It’s very different actually. It’s very, very different. In fact, there are actually no similarities to 2007. I say that for a number of reasons. In 2007, I saw things that I wasn’t happy with. I wasn’t happy with the way we had managed things, and while I didn’t accept all of the criticisms that were being levelled and talked about, I saw there was some merit in the arguments that were being made.
This is very different. We’ve spent nine months in formal consultation, negotiation with the trade union group. Nobody can question our commitment to the talks. Nobody can question our patience. Nobody can question the business needs. Nobody can question the rationale. Nobody can question the fairness of what we’re doing. This is completely different to what we had seen before. <----(ie Unite Lawyers take note - Flex)
FT: So you’re more determined not to settle.
WW: I’m always determined to do what’s right, and I think what I did in 2007 was what was right at that time. And so that’s why people should not look for parallels or look for precedent or look for signals.
I would not have moved forward to implement these changes if I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. And when I implemented the changes, I meant it. It wasn’t a move, just another game that we’re playing, I implemented these changes because I believed it was the right thing for the business to do, I believed it was the responsible thing for management to do in the circumstances, and I’m absolutely committed to seeing them through.
FT: Why does BA have such a poor history of industrial relations?
WW: I don’t think we do; genuinely. It’s interesting, I spoke at Kingston University last night and I was asked this question. I think what we have is we’ve got a lot of publicity around industrial relations in BA, much of it inaccurate, because the media will write the story, strike at BA, summer of discontent. But they write that every summer.
So I did an interview with Chris Blackhurst [of the Evening Standard], and the first thing he said to me was, correct me if I’m wrong, but is the first summer that you haven’t had a strike in BA? I said, no, Chris, it’s actually the fourth year in a row where we haven’t. And I said the last one was a strike in Gate Gourmet, which then boiled over into BA, and it was not a dispute with BA.
So I said, our track record is very different to the perception. The problem is we’re a high profile company, so your newspaper writes about us all the time, every newspaper does, and anything that happens within BA tends to happen in the public domain. So you hear a lot more about BA. I think you hear a lot more about the airline industry.
FT: Air France and Lufthansa don’t seem to have the same sort of problems.
WW: No, Air France have had them recently. Lufthansa have had them recently.
You don’t read about it. It’s a bit like ... you know, I’m into football, so there’s a big debate on the radio about Thierry Henry handling the ball in the France Ireland game.
And somebody was saying, we wouldn’t be debating this if it happened in the match between Slovenia and Russia. So the only reason we discuss this is because it’s local to us and we have an interest in it.
But it happens. I don’t think we’ve got a bad track record, but I think our industry is a high profile industry. Our industry is a legacy industry. Our industry is heavily unionised, and so we’re unlike a lot of industries today. So for that reason, I think we tend to be in the spotlight more.
But I don’t think our track record is that bad. I think we’ve got a good track record when it comes to change within the business.
FT: Okay. You must have had quite a few cancellations now.
WW: No.
FT: Really?
WW: There’s no evidence of this impacting the business at all.
Booking profiles haven’t changed at all.
Literally, I’ve not seen any impact.