Union managers have undermined cabin crew and boosted BA’s hand - Times Online
It was supposed to have been a winter of discontent. What we have is a summer of discomfort for British Airways passengers as the one rumbling dispute of the past six months explodes into a head-on clash that threatens to define industrial relations in the first weeks of the post-Labour economy.
What is at issue at BA is no longer about cuts in cabin crew to enable the airline to withstand two years of losses of more than £900 million. It is not even about individual travel perks. Nor is it about breaking the union. It is about breaking the management of Bassa, the sub-branch of the union at the heart of the dispute, representing 10,000 stewards and stewardesses.
Bassa’s leadership has forced Tony Woodley, the general secretary of Unite, the parent union, into a negotiating stance that he is struggling to justify. That is a weakness at the head of a super-union whose shortcomings are magnified by having two ageing general secretaries close to retirement. And that weakness is Willie Walsh’s strongest hand and one that has led a previously uncertain BA chief executive into a hardline stance of no surrender.