British Airways - CC Industrial Relations Mk V

[TOM100]

Where will it end ?

Sorry this is a bit long.......

I find this situation terribly sad for all involved in BA and those people who rely on BA for their livelihoods too (handling agents, caterers, cleaners etc etc). It is also really sad for the likes of Tiramisu, Hiflyer, Slidebustle etc who are genuinely worried about themselves, you can hear it in their posts.

I think BASSA are playing a very, very serious and very dangerous game of poker, and having tried to think through the various consequences, I can see absolutely no upside for them (and by inference their members), other than some temporarily inflated egos. Whatever the outcome, I think they have been tactically outmanouevered and made some serious errors of judgement. So:-

1. BASSA win the court case on Feb 1. As has been said:-

Willie either recruits a la new fleet to backfill the VR people and adds a degree of complexity to the business (rostering, payroll etc) - not desirable, complexity costs, but doable. When NF gets to critical mass start moving 'expensive' routes across to them.

Willie recruits new entrants onto existing Ts&Cs - not going to happen imo, he would have achieved nothing with all this upset.

Willie issues all crew with 90 days notice to terminate existing contracts, all existing crew onto new contracts, new entrants onto new fleet, no complexity as earlier - controversial in short term, but attractive. Perfectly legal, so presumably BASSA cannot threaten IA over this (not sure legally if this assumption is correct).

So BASSA will almost certainly just hasten the arrival of new fleet. Great job BASSA.

2. BA win the court case on Feb1:-

BASSA lose confidence of membership and suffer humiliation.

BA sue Unite/BASSA for damages running into millions - will this kill BASSA (and possibly Unite) ?

Where then for BASSA ?

Period of instability - Willie pushes through more change (some that could have been negotiated away), BASSA in disarray.

BASSA will have totally wrecked the opportunity for a negotiated settlement and members will pay the price. Great job BASSA.


Whatever scenario, now that brand damage has been done, forward bookings affected etc. The only way BA will regain public confidence (and bookings) is if the company can assure them that this will not happen again. The board will want Willie to numb the power of BASSA for good to achieve this confidence, even if this means that at the end of the process he is a token sacrificial lamb - he will have achieved what many others have failed to do and (assuming BA survive) will have put BA on a massively strong long term financial footing.

I cannot see, from a logical business perspective, how BA can leave BASSA unchecked ??? They are past the point of no return at this stage imo. Investors are demanding this reform.

The timing of this dispute also (I think) sucks for Unite and I think presents a real dliemma for them (not that BASSA will care). Unite bankroll the labour party and want to see them in power or at the very least limit the size of a Conservative majority. It is very much in Unite's interest to see this and they spend millions and millions to achieve that. Conservatives have introduced, in the past, legislation to curb TU power.

BA (as we just saw) along with the BBC are the most reported/press covered organisations in the country. We have seen that BASSA have pretty much zero public support with their dispute, esp with their terrible, ill conceived 12 days of Christmas message. Any dispute/potential dispute will get blanket press coverage.

This potential dispute will be just on the brink (or depending on when/if it is called and how long it lasts) could be bang in the middle of a general election campaign. P*ssed off travellers disrupted = p*ssed off voters. P*ssed off public who have lost jobs/unsympathetic to BASSA = p*ssed off voters. Guess who is supporting this - Labour's biggest donor ! Can see Messrs Brown and Mandelson's grubby hands involvement if it got to this ??

Dying Labour governments associated with industrial unrest.

Unite potentially shooting themselves in the foot on a much wider political scale.

Whatever way you look at it, all plays to BA and Willie's team.

BASSA really have pressed the nuclear button and they seriously need to eat some humble pie and try to get back to meaningful negotiation, I think they are in a really perilous position. If they don't, I can't see any way that there are any positives in this for them (and members) whatever happens.

Those who say the recession will end, yes it will. Remember though unemployment is a lag indicator and wont peak until later this year. So discretionary travel spend will still be under pressure for some time. Financial services wont ever (imo) go back to how it was and travel spend will thus be reduced.

We have yet to see the impact of higher tax rates and bankers bonuses being curbed - this may again see a reduction in travel spend. BA have a long way to go to ride out this storm - they can't go on losing 1 million pounds a day indefinitely. If it's not Willie, the next CEO needs to tackle it - you can't compete in a hugely competitive market with uncompetitive costs and poor producivity - it's the law of economics ! They have gone after everything else in the company......

Those who say the government will not allow BA to go under, I think you are wrong. Unlike the banking sector, there would be no systemic risk to the financial system (like the banks) if BA were not around. Parts of the organisation would be attractive to other organisations or re-born mkII.
Also, there could very well be a Conservative government in power at the time and they were going to let Northern Rock go bust !

Even though the government did bail Northern Rock, look what happened. They slashed jobs (000's), carved the business up, closed bits down etc, in order to restore an acceptable level of profitability to re-pay the taxpayer and make it attractive to a suitor......we demanded it. They would do the same with BA if and it is a big if they even stepped in - so they would need to make same changes.

BASSA, you only have 1 choice, negotiate for your life and quickly, you cannot win this battle.

Which is the lesser of two evils, the above scenarios, or 1/2 crew members less. negotiate clever, like scope agreements, ways of working in the future etc etc to try and reduce the future risk of impositions (or at least lessen the likelihood) and attempt to water down the impact of new fleet. BASSA can then genuinely claim to have achieved something, the alternative is to follow their current route/sleepwalk to oblivion.