Historically both sides probably are to blame - In the past Cabin Crew management at BA has seemed to have done anything for a quiet life. At the first sign of major disagreement the BASSA Reps have said "no", the war drums have started beating, BASSA have threatened IA and management has certainly given the appearance of backing down. Indeed in some ways this may well have been politically expedient for those Board members who were charged with cabin crew Issues. It led to BASSA gaining a reputation for being bloody minded, and since times were good the solution to many problems seemed to be the use of the mythical money hose. The Cabin Crew were able to claim, correctly, they had a strong Union that got results, their T&Cs were world leading and the moderates were invisible. This state of affairs was indeed BA's "fault", if we are apportioning blame.
Fast forward to recent years. The economy has nosedived and more importantly for BASSA the make up and style of Senior BA management changed. Here is where BASSA stuffed up. They could not see that the current leadership team were not going to be cowed and they failed to notice that they had lost their guardian angel at board level. So when BASSA were asked to negotiate their response was still the same: a failure to negotiate in any meaningful way and I suspect a blind hope that if they stalled long enough the recession would either go away and/or the management would give up and take the money from other Departments budgets'. BASSAs failure to move with the times has now left them, and their members, horribly exposed.
In short, yes, BASSA and BA probably are historically to blame; but the blame for the current debacle lies squarely in BASSAs lap.
Last edited by wiggy; 6th Mar 2010 at 13:56.