A colleague has posted an erudite contribution on the BA BALPA website providing an insight into the lack of trust that our CC colleagues have with management. I will not cut and paste it but will paraphrase - I will let him post it if he feels it is appropriate.
He and some other VCC reported for a trip during the strike which was the first half of a Back to Back. There were some members of the crew that were regular CC. They were concerned that for the second half of the trip they would be rostered to fly with strikers. The prospect of this was causing serious misgivings amongst the regular crew. A CC manager was contacted by the CSD with regard to the situation. The CC manager stated that there were no guarantees and that they may well be operating with strikers. The CC were very peturbed about this and were of a mind not to operate, the manager said they would be treated as strikers if they took this action.
At this point the operating captain, part of the briefings during the strike, then stepped in. He found another CC manager who said "No problem I will deal with this and I guarantee that they will fly with other crew in the same position" He then combined two crews for the second part of the B2B and the problem was sorted.
You can see here a small but typical example of truly appalling CC management, also an example of good CC management. If some of the CC managers cannot be bothered to look after the people who are trying to help the company out during difficult times, than what hope is there. It also gives an insight as to how CC are sometimes managed on a day to day basis. If you are not a "bolshy" person who will ignore a foolish manager and go over their head - or as in this case have an advocate to do it for you, what do you do?
There are bad managers that need to be rooted out, there are militant CC that need to be rooted out, but like Eddy perhaps we should look at this more evenly and not become entrenched in our positions.