Jsl/xt668
Moving on from the minutiae.
No-one likes to see their take home pay reduced, or worse-ask Globespan, but sometimes market forces must prevail. The business plan has to reflect what's going on in the industry-not what used to go on. To this end there has to be a carrot, even if it's just the small carrot of having a job at the end of it.
Colleagues at a highly regarded large far eastern carrier were asked to take first a 7% and then a whopping 16% salary cut at the time of 911 and then SARS. You didn't have to accept, there were contracts in force after all. But if you declined to sign how would all that sit when your own contract was up for renewal in a few months or at most 3 years. (The carrot). That airline returned to profitability, restored the wage but made it dependent on that profitability and still pay annual bonuses that Europeans can only dream of. Their crews work hard, have no safety net in hard times and yet enjoy an enviable reputation worldwide. OK so you may argue that their cost base is way down on BA's since they're based in the far east. But they sell tickets online worldwide and that is surely the nub of all of this.
To compete your business plan/cost base has to be somehow competitive with the rest.
If one section of your workforce's cost base is so offscale as to be cancerous the you have to tackle it head on-and even then you may not survive. It seems that until WW came along no CEO was really willing to grapple with this monster, and so the cancer grew.
Not all pills come sugar coated.
S