A Lurker:
You know old chap, you're really not doing yourself or your cause any favours by trotting out the same old tired rhetoric.
Are we to honestly believe that only BASSA crew are capable of doing their jobs? All this "Bigging oneself up" must surely serve only to further alienate (and even insult, not to mention patronize) your colleagues at other bases and people like
BACrewboy (amongst others) who come across on this forum as conscientious, professional and with a positive mental attitude that can serve to make BA once again
"The World's Favourite Airline".
I could understand this elitist attitude if you'd undergone some form of special extra SEP training that is exclusive to BASSA and which allows their members to walk onto an aircraft, cure the sick, heal the lame and then feed the 5,000 whilst all the time watching over everyone with steely-eyed determination to prevent possible terror attacks. I guess the ability to walk on water would be useful in the event of ditching at sea, but still...
I'll be very impressed...No, I'll make a donation to "Help For Heroes" - IF: You can post a quick summary (without resorting to cliches or BASSA / Dave Spart rhetoric) of why you believe BASSA's demands to be fair and reasonable, and what exactly it is that you're intending to strike over anyway, because many people (including me) are no longer sure what that is.
Just to help you out, here are some points which have already been covered and discounted as having no bearing:
"Imposition is unacceptable" -
Then maybe BASSA should have talked when they had the chance. Been done.
"Restore crew levels to what they were, then we'll talk" -
Can't. Crew have already gone. Been done.
"If we let them get away with this, what's next?" -
Can't strike over future possible changes. Been done.
"It's not safe to operate with new levels" -
Other BA bases do. And other airlines (including mine!) work much closer to "Legal" than any BA crews. All of the levels are way above those that the CAA lays down as acceptable minima anyway. Been done.
"It will create bad feeling onboard and will lead to bad CRM" -
What, and the current situation doesn't? Speculative at best, and been done.
"We've offered BA a deal and they just dismissed it out of hand" -
A deal worth (even at the most generous estimate) about 30% of the required savings. Been done.
"The recession is over" -
The recession is still ongoing. And as airlines tend to lag recession by anything from 12-18 months we're all far from out of the woods yet. Been done.
"This whole mess only came about because of price fixing, fines, etc." -
All of which were accounted for in previous years' results and have no bearing on the current situation other than to further fuel distrust of BA management. Been done. To death.
"The pilots get a better deal because they get their money back later" etc. -
Untrue, irrelevant and unconnected with a Cabin Crew dispute anyway. I work in the same building as my Managing Director. Am I entitled to the same deal as him? Been covered.
"Other departments aren't being asked for the same level of savings that we are" -
Other departments have done this already over many years. What's making it painful for BASSA is that no other management up until now have had the balls to tackle BASSA. Now they have no choice. They either destroy BASSA or BA will die. Been done.
"What's it got to do with you anyway? You're not BA cabin crew!" -
True. I do however book an awful lot of BA flights to position our crews around, so a strike will make a big difference to my day-to-day operations. I'm free to choose another carrier, but I like BA and hope they'll still be around after all this is over. I also work with CAP371 and so forth on a daily basis, so it's not easy to pull the wool over my eyes with regards to what's legal and what's not.
So, you were saying?
