Temps shafted ??
Sorry MissM but I beg to differ. BA hires a bucket load of temps across the July/August period both in the air and on the ground. If you talk to colleagues who are ground crew at LGW you will find that the manpower planners have been flexing the numbers of PSU staff by bringing in temporary workers for an awful long time. When these folk are hired they know from the outset that whilst they are on an 11month contract, there is the usual cancellation /notice clause. Incidentally, the reason the contracts are only 11 months revolves around the fact that if it was for 12 months, they would not be deemed to be temps and would be elegible for all the benefits that full timers enjoy. No matter. The fact is that the temps had their contracts cutshort last year because - wait for it - BA was in a somewhat dire position financially. The company has been bleeding cash at a scary rate. Again, if you had spoken to anyone outside of cabin crew you would have learned that there was a wholesale block on hiring any contract or temp staff. All external spend has to be justified to the n'th degree. In my area, IT, we have had duty travel to NCL axed becasue it wasn't considered important enough. On top of that all areas were told to reduce manpower levels through VS. My area had to shed about 8% of the workforce.
Now I would have thought that even the least business minded cabin crew person might have twigged that getting rid of temps and also looking for VS volunteers kinda suggested that all was not well with the company finances. But what do we get from BASSA ? Flat refusal initially to participate in any meaningful discussions because those nasty Amicus/CC89 people are in the same room. Is this the attitude of a responsible group of individuals ? Do you really and truthfully want these people to be fighting your corner when the chips are down ? To me the coe across as a bunch of amateurs on a massive ego trip who are playing very dangerous games with not just their jobs, not just the jobs of their fellow BASSA members but the livelihoods of everyone in BA. Now I really don't care whether someone wears a Backing BA lanyard, a BASSA lanyard or one which has hearts and bluebirds on, but woe betide the person or group of people who through there mindless actions threatens to bring down the company that I have worked for over 20 years for, that I have a substantial pensions investment in and that I am also a shareholder of. As soon as BASSA issued strike dates, I volunteered for crew duties. Why ? because I recognised that a strike, if successful, would cause irreperable damage to the financial future of this company. If BA goes under, I and thousands of other staff and ex staff (there's about 100,000 all told) face the prospect of zero pension. Now you might not be that worried about having only a state pension to live on , but I don't take such a sanguine approach, partly because although I am no spring chicken, I have a young family to support. And don't trot out the line that the government will pick up the tab. The current economic climate suggests that they have rather more pressing needs for the cash they have than bailing out pension funds of collapsed companies. Oh and the pension protection pot won't cover the hole either.
I think you will find that there are an awful lot of other staff in BA who have similar views. Oddly enough it was the finance areas (which now includes IT) that put up the greatest number of volunteers. Now you have to ask yourself, if the bean counters reckon they need to step into the breach, then the numbers coming from BA management may not be entirely wrong. A further point of clarification. If you cared to look at the BA intranet pages on the subject of volunteering for crew or crew support roles, you would find exactly what is offered in terms of pay/overtime/TOIL . I'll make it easy for you. Anyone who works an early or a late gets a shift premium of about £10. Day shifts don't get this. If staff work a shift in addition to their normal working day, then they can claim the extra hours as TOIL subject to prior management approval. So we aren't doing it for the money.
By all means have your next ballot. If you manage to garner sufficient support then maybe you will want to go on strike again. But before you do, consider this. There are some 30,000 other people in BA who wish tosee the company not only survive but be successful. When you strike, you are not just hitting BA management, you are hitting these 30,000 people as well. Are the principles that you believe you are fighting for worth not just your own job, but those of 30,000 others who have never done anything to harm you ? Are they worth the pensions that go along with that ?
My belief is that even if BASSA do hold a ballot and get a majority, the numbers of crew who will report for work will be more than enough to ensure a 100% operation is run andif there isn't that once again volunteers from otherparts of BA will fill the gaps. Which kind of makes strike action rather futile, reduces BASSA's ability to be seen as a credible union and makes the parent union Unite appear impotent. None of this is particularly good for trade unionism. I would suggest that the time has come for BASSA to step back from the brink if they wish to retain any dignity and ability to to represent the interests of those members who still pay their dues.