As a pilot I feel like BASSA has left me no choice but to volunteer for this position. IF a 12 day strike was to happen, I would lose my job as the company would fold. I can't sit back and let that happen.
If this dispute would have happened at another time, or if BASSA would have been truly interested in negotiating a painful but neccesary solution, I'd have to think about it a lot longer.
It saddens me to see that BASSA is vilifying flight crew once again, while ALL departments have volunteers coming in to help out during the potential strike? BALPA is being completely impartial about this whole affair. Sadly there will be many BASSA members who will not believe us when we tell them that..
While the BASSA line is for our colleagues to tell us to "FOXTROT OSCAR" (quote from BASSA publication Mod!
) downroute, our union is leaving this decision up to us.
Secondly, could I also kindly remind BASSA that the OpenSkies issue affected us as much as it did them - the only difference is that BALPA decided to act upon it while BASSA chose not to. I'm not pointing fingers or blaming BASSA for not having done so, simply pointing it out.
Cabin Crew: Honestly, if you were being told you would lose 2-3 weeks of allowances because BALPA called a strike, but you could keep your allowances if you volunteered to do some ground work over that time to help operations out - what would you do? Add to this the fact that, if you decided to sit at home, there would be a real possibility that there wouldn't be a job to come back to.
Thoughts?