I am a purser for British Airways and I have only just started to read the posts on this forum.
I did not strike and I have been upset for some time now that the union ( and I am in the usually more moderate branch Amicus/cc89) has not been more willing to negotiate. It has been clear to many crew that savings could be made. For instance on eurofleet we really do not need CSD's, Pursers are able to take out aircraft in-charge. We could have agreed to Fixed links and to work later on our last days and to the new crew compliments. In fact, if we had a union willing to negotiate, we would not be in this mess now with New Fleet bearing down on us. However many of the union reps are CSD's. Say no more!
This said, however, it is not all one sided. Mr. Walsh has agrivated the situation. He has fed false information about how much crew earn. The salaries quoted in the paper are those of the senior crew on the old contract prior to 1997. Crew that joined after that date earn less that 20,000 pa (which includes their allowances) Many of them have a basic pay of £12,000. He seemes to think it is ok to rubbish all of us and turn all our collegues against us.
Many of us did not strike and do not agree with the strike but we are all being tarred with the same brush. To hear some of the comments on this site is very upsetting.
The majority of us are stuck in the middle between TWO sets of children and we are unable to do anything about it. We are totally powerless. The last vote took place a long time ago and many crew voted the way they did because they were very upset with the way they were being portrayed in the paper.
Now many of them feel they have nothing to loose because they feel they are being punished for striking. As I said before, I did not strike but I have had many crew crying on my flights. It is not a nice place to work right now.It is very strange on some flights because people act like nothing is going on, because they don't know how others voted and they don't want to have any upset. We are all being made out to be these bad people but all crew want to do is safeguard there livelihoods. Unfortunately some have been persuaded to do this by striking. Now what we need is a CEO that looks at the bigger picture and gives this mad union a way out of this mess. He has not done this and I do believe that he does have a bigger agenda. Had he agreed to return staff travel this strike would certainly not be happening.
Please dont all hate crew because we are stuck in this situation and many, like me, who voted NOT to strike are powerless to do anything. Even crew who voted YES to strike are nice people (mostly). We would not be doing a job like this in the first place if we were not a caring bunch.
Some of the hatred on this forum is of no help.
Many thanks for listening to my side of this.