Is it not personal? Is management not after us?
No, it is not personal. Willie doesn't know who you are, I doubt he cares. He wants savings, and he's probably not really that bothered how you achieve them as long as they don't inhibit operational flexibility. It's BASSA that have made this about an individual
They placed a wall at Waterside and allowed anyone to write whatever they wanted on it. What actions, except that they removed the wall a couple of days later, were taken?
Another BASSA myth. They placed a wall alllowing people to say how they were backing BA. It wasn't there to allow people to write abuse on it, and nobody did. The orchestrated offence BASSA have taken is symptomatic of the hysterical herd mentality a proportion of crew like to promote in order to claim they are being bullied. A bit like wearing pink armbands at the AGM.
Management has been bloating to the media with heavily exaggerated figures on our salaries and compared us to Virgin Atlantic and mistakingly forgot, I should imagine (?), to include their allowances which are paid downroute. They have compared our salaries to those of LCCs when we are a premium airline with a different clientele.
Another BASSA myth - Virgins figures don't include their downroute allowances. Who pays those then? Somebody other than Virgin? Of course the CAAs figures contain Virgins allowances, they are total employee costs,
not salaries. And remember, the pilots are quite happy to be compared to a premium carrier like Virgin.
I think management is aiming for us.
They are aiming for everyone. You're just the last one who won't negotiate, thereby singleing yourselves out.
It is very rich of WW to mention our salaries considering he's making almost £800000 a year. He's making more money than the President of the United States.
Utterly irrelevant, unless you think we should live in a communist state where everyone should be paid equally. If I wanted to be flippant I'd point out that Willie Walsh actually has more executive experience than Barak Obama!
He has refused to take responsibility for the price fixings. He has failed to increase the share value to the company's shareholders.
The price fixing allegations stem from before his tenure as CEO, and it appears there's is considerable legal debate as to whether it actually occurred anyway. BA still hasn't paid any fines and the case against the inviduals involved collapsed. And he hasn't increased the share value in the teeth ofthe worst economic downturn in a generation. He has managed to pay a dividen for the first time in a decade though, and has acheived a 10% margin for the first time in the companys history.
He has managed to turn the entire company against us cabin crew. He has completely ruined CRM. That is something which will take years to recover.
No dear, you did that yourself, by allowing your union to publish hysterical, anti-pilot polemics about sweetheart deals and protecting their own pensions, and rubbishing the engineers, the managers, LGW crew and anyone they felt like lashing out at. CRM is fine with the non-militant crew, I've flown with a great bunch during the strikes. If any strikers feel that they are so incensed that they cannot communicate with me on board I, and I'm sure most of my colleagues, will have no problem getting them replaced by someone who can. Their anger is their problem, not ours.
We are responsible for the onboard service but we can only deal with what we have. If the company decides to make changes, and we have seen some great changes since WW took over, what are we supposed to do?
Deal with it. Designing the service is neither yours, nor your unions responsibility. You are there to deliver what you are told as best you can.
We are not the only ones who have been threatening to go on strike over the years. The pilots threatened to take industrial action not too long ago.
Quite. At a time of maximum profitability for the company, and only after agreeing to match any cost base BA could achieve at Open Skies ourselves. I've yet to see BASSA offer to cost match anything!