Reluctant tho' I am to do his work for him, Crewfriend did say that pilots had left BALPA to join UNITE, not BASSA, clearly not the same thing. What branch he claims, who knows? Likely to be true? In infinitesimally small numbers I would imagine. I mean there's bound to be a few extreme left leaning pilots, who might feel that this current pan UK and pan European mobilisation of "the workers" against capitalism is for them.
On another of his points, I find myself (despite it being almost impossible for me to be more diametrically opposed in all other views) agreeing with him.
One of BASSA's "excuses" for their appalling handling of this, is that when BA returns to decent profits, "The managers will be getting their big bonuses". It seems to me that Unite and the unions representing other staff when negociating cost savings during the Company's financial crisis, have missed a trick. Why did they not negociate a change to any future Profit Share Scheme, in that instead of it being calculated on a person's salary, it's just a straight equal share? ie. £10m pot divided by 40,000 staff. No complicated formula that's costly to administer and a very real incentive to deliver excellent customer service (and not to strike! - maybe that's why they didn't suggest it!) for the front line staff that often receive some of the smaller sums under the current scheme.
This would have been a great coupe for the unions to say to their members - look what we've achieved for you - you'll now recoup some of what you are having to give away in cost savings, when BA returns to profit
The senior managers would, of course get their own bonuses, as now, which are part of their contract, and there would be some losers (many on here, I'm sure) but maybe much more robust profits, because the sum involved is a genuinely incentivising sum that people would work hard to achieve.
The rest of what Crewfriend says, is of course, fantastical, deluded and frankly quite disturbing nonsense.
Last edited by Beagle9; 23rd Dec 2010 at 05:21.