Originally Posted by PC767
But the proposal is for a new fleet and it is transparent that as new fleet grows so old fleet will shrink. Your current earnings are only protected whilst you operate routes with higher allowances, overtime and box payments. If you were a BA manager who would you use to crew such trips?
To use your turn of phrase, I calmly ask you to consider how BASSA could have (and still can if they are quick)
Negotiated (yeah, I know they don't like the 'N-word' at BASSA, but stay with me..) a way round this problem.
For example, group all the trips in to highest paying, mid and low paying. Have an agreement that for every high paying trip transferred to New Fleet, a mid and low one are transferred too. In fact, I seem to remember Bill F offering such a matrix to allay concerns about the NRTs and SINs all moving across overnight.
However, if BASSA refuse to negotiate (and I mean in good faith, rather than saying they have offered £170m+ of savings that turn out to be £54m, and that they want paid back in 2yrs anyway), and then go on to strike, I
would fully expect and hope that BA would move across all the high earning trips to New Fleet as fast as they could to recover the massive sums of money that BASSA would no doubt cost the company (and in turn the other 30,000 employees)
From a business point of view, it makes no sense at all to have New Fleet Crew and Legacy crew on the same aircraft. The savings come about because NF crew can do fixed links, shorter nightstops, longer days, earlier starts etc.
If you have a mixed crew, then the 'herd' can only move at the pace of the slowest Wildebeest. (to use an analogy from Mother Nature). Also, from the point of view of a Legacy crew, if you want to be selfish (and I don't hear many crew saying they are willing to take a slight pay cut to make sure new joiners are on the same deal) you want to get maximum savings from the NF crew, to minimise the impact on the legacy crew. If BA could get £100m savings from NF on a separate fleet, and only £30m from an integrated approach, where do you think they are going to look for the other £70m? Yes, Legacy crew, exactly.
From a CRM point of view, having mixed crews is a nightmare. "Can you do the duty frees?" - "Why don't you do it? You're getting paid over twice what I am, and you've got a stand-over and I'm on min rest - do it yourself!" - You think I'm exaggerating? Talk to crew who have worked for an airline that has merged with another one, with different Ts&Cs! There are some recent examples to learn from...