PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - BA CC industrial relations (current airline staff only)
Old 21st Jan 2011, 22:23
  #2507 (permalink)  
Spanner in the works
 
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Edit: this response was to your post a couple above.

Sorry Betty - I do respect your points and views and have done over the decades this thread has existed.

But you want to leave it there! Thanks but I don't.

Eddy raised the point that folk like Wonkaside and MM have been making for a while.
"Your next"
"All your roles will be filled with volunteers - see how you like it".

I have the utmost respect for the CC role - not least since I have done the course and a few flights. It's the hardest thing, mentally and physically together that I have ever tried and completed.

But - when it comes down to it -to suggest that any Engineering strike could be back-filled by volunteers is plain ridiculous. We are not all "database typists" or double-entry book-keepers. My God, and there was me thinking that the word "Engineer" automatically pictures a greasy oik with a spanner in the hand!
While I love the fact that folk know it is not - the sheer differing levels of skill-sets across the Engineering board (and other departments, but I can;t speak for them) makes any possibility of VEng, well...impossible.

I'm not sure why Eddy is going down this - "be careful, you might be next route".
Surely the danger of VCC was always in-mind with mass industrial action. My colleagues and myself were talking about it 20 years ago.

It's not putting anyone down - just making the point that an employee group that can be replaced by other folk with 3-4 weeks minimum training ought to be careful when bluffing a poker hand.
One day - your hand might get called. It was.

I think CC had a battle to fight. A genuine one that would have garnered support from many folk across BA. But the battle they chose was the wrong one. And now we are into striking over issues absolutely nothing to do with the original.
And the battle that should have been fought has become a minor skirmish caught up and brushed aside by the BA tanks, almost as a side-issue.
That to me is the saddest part of the whole thing. And the blame for that sits squarely with BASSA and Unite.

Edit: And I will leave it there! Sorry if I come across as a bit off. Just a bit peed off with this result.
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