British Airways - CC Industrial Relations & Negotiations

[plodding along]

From several posts above it seems no one really knows what this is about any more.

I think we need a straight talking pro BASSA person to come on here and explain without emotion what the issues are and what the plan of action actually is.

We need to know the aim of this potential strike.

To go back to the beginning BA set a cost saving target of £140m or 24% for IFCE (I know it was £82m originally but that was before the fleet stand downs).

Each department had it's own cost saving target.

Some departments, after seeing an independant financial review accepted these savings, polled their members and came up with a negiotated settlement.

BASSA held a big meeting at a racecourse and about 1000 crew voted on the other 13,000's behalf to say they DID NOT accept the cuts.
I don't recall BASSA polling the remaining members.

BASSA then came up with it's own £174m cost saving proposal which was not only later valued at £54m but was temporary.

They had a mantra of "temporary soloution for a temporary problem".
ALL their savings were to be paid back in full after two years (please correct me if I am wrong), that is after all what the 1000 had voted on - no cuts, full stop.

(Did BASSA even actually poll it's members on how to achieve these tempory savings? Did crew want middle east back to backs? Did they want a 2.61% pay cut? Did they want crew complements reduced? I don't know.)

So, the membership wanted no cuts, so BASSA offered no cuts. (Just a temporary soloution to be paid back in full)

Nine months later nothing had changed because BA wanted/needed permanent savings and the membership had still not accepted permanent cuts.

One presumes this would have gone on for infinitum, BASSA were never going to agree with BA's cost savings because the membership had told them not to.

Thus the imposition.

Now, the strike ballot seems to be because of the imposition, BASSA say remove it and get back round the table.

So two questions, if (option 1) BA did remove imposition and get back round the table, has BASSA and it's membership's position changed?
Do they now accept the need for £140m savings or not?
If not then surely we are back to the same deadlock we've had for the last nine months and talks will go on for ever with no agreement reached.

Question two, (option two), if BASSA now accept the £140m target and with the involvement of the membership negiotiate a way of achieving it. How could this be done?
Forgive me if I'm being simple but to save 24% of a department's wage bill you only have three possibilities:

1: a 24% reduction in wages (ouch!) Crew have said they do not want this.


2: a 24% increase in hours worked. As longhaul crew already do circa 900 hours this would mean shorthaul making all the cuts, a huge lifestyle change by reducing days off and increasing sectors flown through fixed links etc.

3: Reducing the number of crew on board by 24%, thus keeping pay and hours worked the same.
Given the above three choices would crew not vote for option three, thus having the same end result as the imposition?

The other big factor is that in reality 24% is very hard to achieve through the current workforce, from the BASSA newsletter the BA imposition only saves about £40m, the other £100m will come from new fleet.

Is this not a good thing? If a strike forces new fleet away then the remaining £100m would have to come from current crew, am I not correct in saying that when new fleet was removed a few months back the current crew faced reduced days off and single night stopovers in addition to the complement changes?

I've had enough typing now but what I'm trying to say is that despite the imposition is this not the best solution anyway?

If customers genuinely suffer a little then that is an unfortunate result of necessary cost cutting, do crew really want to swap the reduced complements for a large pay cut or a big jump in sectors flown just to get more crew back on the aircraft?

I'm perplexed.

Please could someone outline how crew would prefer to make these savings (if at all) assuming it's not the way BA has imposed.