Another vintage update.
Given that the BASSA reps have told the membership that they havent got time for a meeting or to post on their forum does anyone else find it strange that they seem to have several hours to write this tosh?
Interesting that its now Woodley and Walsh. What happened to Tony? Sounds like BASSA may be having a fall out with Unite again.
BASSA > Latest News
FURTHER UPDATE
Jul 31st, 2010 by admin
Just to let you know there has been a slight re-scheduling of meetings next week. On Monday morning Woodley and Walsh are meeting and in the afternoon Woodley wants to meet the Branch Committee at Holorn.
We will then meet as a committee on Tuesday to discuss what was said the previous day and decide timings of future meetings and ballots etc etc. Rgds Duncan
One of the reps has written a spoof message from a Waterside manager (see below). I was in two minds about publishing it as I didn’t want to attract criticism or complaints that we were trivialising the dispute or being flippant about the hardship being endured, but I do believe sometimes a gallows sense of humour can cheer the soul so please take this in the manner it is intended.
YOUR AIRLINE NEEDS YOU
Well we’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel once, and now we will have to do it again. We still need more volunteers to be pretend cabin crew in the event of another dispute. Wee Willie stood up at the recent AGM and said he would run a full schedule even if those naughty cabin crew refused to come to work again, so we need more of you to volunteer. You see it’s all about the illusion of us still operating an airline. We have managed to keep the press away from the departure and arrival halls during the previous dispute days, otherwise the well-kept secret of empty flights would have got out. The planespotters noticed our wheeze of the same aircraft taking off and landing all the time, so we had to stop that. 747s getting airborne after 300 yards was also a bit of a obvious giveaway that they were empty. Useful practice for the pilots if we ever opened a base on an aircraft carrier, but a bit of a own goal in the current climate. Empty aircraft in future will take off on one engine. Another idea we are looking at, is a tarpaulin sheet measuring 1 mile by 1 mile which we can cover over the entire engineering base. This will stop that bloody news helicopter from broadcasting to the entire world our rows and rows of parked up aircraft.
We don’t know yet for certain that the crew will strike again, but they just won’t seem to give up. We’ve bullied, threatened, and intimidated them, sacked some of their senior reps, tried to vilify them in the press, removed their staff travel, and still well over half of them have stuck to their guns. Next time we may take out a 64 page advert in our paper - the Mail, with a picture and name of all the strikers. We tried that with a couple of their reps. If that doesn’t scare them there’s not a lot else we can do - other than to send a couple of heavies round to everyone’s house and heave a brick, with a threatening note on, through the window.
So to keep the illusion of us still flying our great airline, this is where you lot come in. We’ve convinced 2000 of you to volunteer, but we need many more. Don’t worry about looking the part - we are taking anyone. You’re only pretend crew anyway. Any passenger bonkers enough to fly with us with all this going on is hardly going to notice your appearance.
We are hearing stories that some of you are developing a sort of Stockholm syndrome towards the crew, and you feel they do have a just cause, and perhaps wee Willie is wrong. Lets be clear - anyone uttering one word of sympathy is history! Also anyone not volunteering will get pressganged and forced to enlist, so you may as well sign up now.
So what do you need for this temporary role? A passport is fairly necessary - we may have the CAA in our pocket, but not HM border control. Innoculations are not necessary as you won’t be spending long enough anywhere to catch anything - well nothing we can inject you against anyway! So just fill in the form and we’ll be in touch to give you a course.
The length of the course will depend on lots of things. If you know what an aircraft looks like that will help, so for some of you from Waterside, you could be there longer. We will try and fit in an aircraft visit, but if time is critical, one of the trainers will bring in some photos of them on a n/stop so you will get the general idea. To stress again - you are only pretend crew, and as long as we can keep you away from any CAA guys this volunteer plan will work ok. If they discover how incompetent you lot are the whole plan could go for a ball of chalk. At the end of the course which could last between 2 hours and a day you will get a pep talk from the head of IFCE, the one and only Mr. Francis. Oily Bill, as he has become affectionately known ( we did try the nickname Honest Bill at one stage, but that was too far fetched even for us) is a boy to watch. He could be going places, though not necessarily with us. He’s only been head of IFCE for 18 months and in that time there’s been 2 industrial action ballots, with another one on the way, there’s been 2 consultative ballots - and he’s lost the lot! There’s been 22 actual dispute days, there’s crew set against crew, he’s had his workforce pilloried by the public and other BA depts ( partly because we did rather exaggerate crew’s actual earnings ). Half his workforce is embarrassed to wear the uniform in public, so you’d think with his dept. imploding around him he’d be having sleepless nights? Not a bit of it ! Water off a duck’s back. He carries on regardless. 2 weeks ago he was bleating on about the merits of Mixed Fleet, or whatever he calls it now. Now he’s seized on the ballot the crew have just had and he’s come out with the interesting notion that 15% voting for it, is a positive for BA. He never was very good with figures so it’s either that, or the 1600 votes for, is a lot more than he thought would vote for it. Finally he’s so busy trying to recruit into this new fleet he seems to have forgotten that unless he persuades half his workforce to take part-time he’s going to end up with more crew than he had before this whole sorry mess started. Anyway once all this sorted, if he’s still about, we might put him in charge of the pilots for a while - see how they cope with him.
Anyway once your course is complete you go back to your normal job - a bit like a sleeper cell, and if another dispute happens we’ll call you and guess what - it’s time to be pretend crew.
Pack a case and turn up at an agreed time. We can’t tell you where you’ll be going - depends on who turns up for work. Isn’t it exciting ? Then you’ll be called to the desk and given a trip. Under normal circumstances crew would now attend a briefing where their competency is checked. Not a good idea with you lot, as you wouldn’t make the security checkpoint, let alone be let anywhere near an aircraft, so we recommend you make your way non-stop to the gate, board the flight and there you will meet your colleagues for the trip. Now the number of crew is a bit complicated. About every 6 months we go the CAA and persuade them to let us take another crew member off an aircraft, so we’re all now uncertain how many the minimum is on each one. What we can say is on most flights there will be at least one other crew as well as you.
Your colleagues, or colleague, fall into 3 groups. There’s you lot - Willie’s “wanna be pretend” crew. The less said about appearances, uniforms, ability, etc the better - you are there to make up the numbers, that‘s all.
The 2nd group is our volunteers from the pilot community. We’re getting disillusioned with this lot. It started off with about 500 coming forward, now the numbers are dwindling by half. This is the problem with volunteers that start to wise up. You see we told them a little “porkie “ to start with, along the lines of if the cabin crew struck for just one day, BA could fold, thus threatening their pensions etc. After 22 days most of them have now worked out it’s not going to happen. Also they’ve deduced if we can stitch up the cabin crew with rather inflated salary figures, how long before we do the same with the pilots, and start comparing them with say Aer Lingus.The other reason we’re glad to see the back of these volunteers is it was costing us a fortune in food. Every time they saw food in a trolley they would eat it thinking it was theirs. We had to fully cater nearly empty aircraft. Anyway there’s a lot less of these pilots now. Those still volunteering either seem to view wee Willie as their idol, be planning a career in senior management (we know one of them is, and isn‘t it obvious). or just hate cabin crew - perhaps these particular ones had a bad experience with a stewardess.
The final group you may see on your flight is actual crew. These are either non-union ( a good excuse to come to work ) or strikebreakers. They are known by another name to normal crew but to even mention the word is a hanging offence. The ones you will meet are normally too pre-occupied to take much notice of what’s going on. Sometimes they wear a disguise like a wig or glasses, in the hope they won’t be recognized by their now ex-friends. They are also recognizable by constantly wringing their hands and uttering expressions like “ I didn’t want to come in but I daren’t lose my staff travel” or I’ve got 3 morgages to pay”. If you can refocus these people long enough, get them to point out various important things - like where the doors are!
Now onto the onboard service. Well that’s the easiest bit. Any pax having to fly with us won’t expect a lot - so that’s what they will get. Probably no IFE, or duty frees, and just some cold food. And if you get a request for more than one drink at a time, just pretend it’s your second coffee break of the morning in Waterside, and it’s your round.- shouldn’t be too difficult.
Some of you have asked what happens if a pax becomes ill. Whatever you do, don’t go near the first aid kit. The street value of the drugs in there is worth more than a Mixed Fleet crew member will earn in a lifetime, so keep your hands off it. If none of your fellow volunteers can help, you could try putting out a PA for a doctor. Our own view on this, is with an average pax load of about 12, it’s a fair bet there isn’t one. Perhaps poke your head in the flight deck and see if one of them can pop back and have a look- at least they get a bit of training once a year. Failing that try to keep the victim alive till you get to your destination, then see if the cleaners can help - they will probably know more about first aid than most of you.
Depending on where you fly to it may be necessary to night stop. If this happens we will ensure you are kept away from any normal crew that may be about, so it may mean you staying at a 1 star hotel near the airport. You’re not there to enjoy yourself anyway, and after a few hours rest it‘s home time anyway.
So that about covers everything. You may have concerns that once you’ve finished your bit of flying, will your main job still be there for you. It’s a fair point because if we can release you in the first place, then your job was never that important to begin with. However this is where our caring employer bit comes in. As you’ve done a bit of flying, we have the perfect job for you - Mixed Fleet !!
Ignore all that old nonsense about redeployment., and keeping your salary. If we can defeat the crew and Unite all the others will fold like a pack of cards. But at least you will still have a job with us. We told another little white lie about the wages to be honest. We said it was the market rate + 10%. That’s true, but it’s not the market rate for crew. It’s actually the average rate for street sweepers in downtown Budapest, and plantation tea pickers in Sri Lanka. As a result we expect a rush of applications from these areas if we ever advertise globally.
The advert in the FT for Mixed Fleet was actually a mistake. We told our comms people to place an advert in the Feltham Times and they misheard. No harm done though. It’s the illusion again. This great airline of ours advertising in the FT! Sadly on the downside only 2 people responded to that ad, and both of them misread the number of zeros in the salary.
So what are you all waiting for. It’s time to enrol as a volunteer. Everyone’s doing it. Even Oily Bill wanted to apply. We turned him down though as he’s doing a great job destroying his dept from his current position - he doesn’t need to get on an aircraft to do it.! Even our own CEO was interested, but there are limits - well, height for a start.
Finally you must be wondering if there is a master plan in all this. Well of course there is That‘s why we‘re in charge Just look at our CEO’s record. Yesterday - Aer Lingus, Today - BA, Tomorrow - Iberia. Just imagine if in the next few years, we can get him employed by most of of the greats - Emirates, Lufthansa,,SAA, United, Cathay and so on. In 20 years there won’t be a decent airline left in the world ! So they will all be down to our level but with a lower cost base, so more bonuses for us. Hurrah!
So you’re needed now - by the world’s nastiest airline. Time to volunteer - or get conscripted anyway- and your career gone!.
FLY THE ILLUSION
Yours The Leaderless er ship lot.