BlueUpGood makes a very good job of telling it like it is, If I can add just one more angle:
The dispute was never about pay, it was about productivity. It was about the manning levels and about the restrictive practices which kept staff on the ground, being paid salary and allowances, when they could have been flying.
On one level, a union doesn’t care that much about its members’ pay but it does care HUGELY about productivity. Because better productivity means fewer people needed to do the same job, and fewer workers equals fewer union members, equals lower subscription income. And in the case of UNITE, less money to spend buying political influence.
And we are talking about an employee group which was massively under-productive compared to its industry peers. For any given cost-saving requirement, it was always going to be easier for BA to attack the productivity side of the job rather than the remuneration side.
If anyone can be bothered to read through it, what follows is my personal recollection of the ‘old way’ of doing things at BA, of which the current CC working practices are the last vestige.
Way back in the mists of time, I spent a year working on the BOAC check-in desks in Terminal 3 (it was called the Oceanic Terminal in those days). We worked a pattern of 6 on – a late-late (15:30 start), a late, two mids and two earlies (06:45 start) – followed by three days off. Normally, you were rostered to work individual flights, opening the desk 90 minutes before departure and closing the flight 45 minutes before. Usually, you did three flights per shift. The first one would be always at least a half-hour after your start, so as soon as you arrived you were sent for coffee. You got a long lunch break, another coffee break in the second half of your shift, and you were always sent home early, usually about two hours before you were due to finish, sometimes more.
The late-late was due to finish at 23:30. The last flight of the day was due to close at 21:45. Of the six shift members, four would be sent home around 20:30-21:00, the two unlucky ones rostered for the last flight would be guaranteed not to have it again next time. If the flight was delayed or for any reason you were still at work after 23:00 – a half-hour before you were due to finish – you were entitled to a car to take you home.
During your downtime, there were some other jobs you could be given – prepping your next flight , helping out where queues were building up or relieving colleagues who were late getting a break. Plus there were a couple of desks, first class and early check-in, which had to be permanently manned. On average, though, I would say that you were actually working between, 3h30 and 4h00 of your eight-hour shifts (the mids were supposed to be 9 hours). Which adds up to 20 hours – say, max 25 – of work over a nine-day ‘week’. Best job I ever had.
Sorry for the nostalgia-fest, bet seriously, I see quite a number of parallels with the present CC situation (most of my colleagues were ex-CC anyway, grounded by age or by marriage under the rules of the day). Within a couple of years of me moving on, the system had changed, any flight could be checked-in from any desk, and allowing for lunch and coffee breaks, staff were working about 6h30 of their shift, an increase in productivity of about 60-80%.