Reargunner,
Picking you up on one of your points, I think you deliberately misrepresent and misquote the BA position. You say;
IFCE say, "There is no business value" in crew staying with the airline.
Whereas the actual, accurate quote from the document is;
No extra business value is obtained for the extra reward in terms of individual productivity or performance
See the subtle difference.
Imagine if I pay someone to mow a lawn today for £10, then have to pay them £11 next time, £13, £14, etc. To a certain extent, after a few times they could say "Well, look at the experience I have, I have mowed it slightly better this time using my skills, a new person wouldn't do that" - Yes, fair enough, up to a point. When it comes to now paying the lawn man £300, letting him borrow my car on a sunday, have 7 tea breaks and a payment if it's raining, I might say to myself, "it's only a lawn for God's sake, how much of a skill level does it really take, and would I notice if I just paid someone else £50, they would probably pick it up pretty quick"
What BA are saying is that if they have crew member, we shall call her Dorris, who has been in the airline since all the planes had propellors, and has remained main crew the whole time, always does the First galley, never anything more than the minimum required, they still have to keep paying her more and more and more every year, for 25 years, despite the fact that she isn't doing anything different. In fact she may be doing things worse, and getting steadily demoralised by the lack of promotion, and is in fact just held in the job with golden handcuffs because of the final salary pension, staff travel and because on the old contracts, you would have to work much much harder in the real world to earn that pay. I know plenty of crew that fit this description, and I'm sure you do too. They do you a disservice.
What BA want is for people to stay in the airline, and be promoted, but to be promoted on the basis of putting in the effort, and improving themselves through training and development, rather than just through hanging about long enough.
Yes, there are some good points about the pilots using payscales like this, but that is to encourage loyalty. I am paid way below market rate now, I get less pay than my mates at EJ and the charters, but I will hang on and stick with BA because I know my time will come. It also means I won't jump ship if EJ make me a better offer, good for BA, they won't incur significant training and recruitment costs to replace me.
The same can not be said of cabin crew. How many people have left to go and join a charter? It just won't happen. How many of the crew are paid less than Ryanair crew?
The main problem with the New Fleet as far as you are concerned could have been sorted if BASSA had
negotiated a SCOPE clause like the pilots, (rather than getting in a strop over hot towels for WT+) then you wouldn't be in this mess. Instead they concentrated on feathering their own Longhaul Heathrow Nest, and screw the rest of you. When they allowed worse Ts&Cs at LGW it was the start of the rot. Mind you, if at the time, they had asked you all if you wanted to take a small pay cut to keep everyone on the same pay, how much support would that have got? Everyone is selfish, but Unions should rise above that, that is part of their remit. By just constantly throwing the newbies to the lions ('97) to protect their own interests, crew have brought this on themselves.