LD12986
It was nearly two years ago the Lehman Brothers collapsed and it was only at the beginning of 2009 did the company start having talks with the unions on cost-savings. The company set a deadline of 30 June 2009 which in itself was too late. The company should have completed negotiations and had changes ready to implement at the end of its financial year 31 March 2009 so it started the next financial year with the benefit of productivity savings.
As I understand it, BA started cost savings quite some time before this. They successfully negotiated with the flight crew and the engineers and the cabin crew at LGW. [Any one with dates of those settlements?] By leaving the obviously difficult candidate to last, they had them cornered.