Mods please dont remove. I have no axe to grind. This is a view from the Telegraph.
Good Luck to all.
If it were not so serious, the farcical collapse of the weekend talks intended to avert a strike of cabin crew at BA would have been laughable. Despite the sensitive nature of negotiations, Derek Simpson, the joint general secretary of the Unite union, thought it a good idea to give regular updates on their progress by tweeting, as if this were somehow any different from shouting the odds out of the window. Then a gaggle of Left-wingers from the Socialist Workers Party, something it was surprising to discover still exists, invaded the office where the talks were taking place, forcing their suspension. In the midst of the mayhem stood a bemused Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive, wondering what on earth was going on. Thousands of passengers whose travel plans will now be disrupted – and many more thinking of flying with the carrier over the summer, but now won't – must have looked on appalled.
The Unite union, and especially the British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA), who have taken the concept of mindless militancy to a whole new level, appears not to care that its company is making heavy losses (£1 billion over the past two years) or that the economic climate necessitates the sort of reforms Mr Walsh was proposing. The key, if not sole, demand of the would-be strikers now appears to be the restoration of perks that were withdrawn as a result of the previous stoppage, suggesting BASSA's original complaints have either been dealt with or dropped. It simply defies common sense for BA's cabin crew, who are far better paid than most of their counterparts, to contemplate further damaging the business and their own job prospects. Even now, at such a late hour, it might be possible to mitigate the worst impact of this damaging dispute – but the long-term damage to BA could be incalculable.