UNTIE advert in tomorrows papers...
GOING NOWHERE Class? Comfort? Cost? Or confrontation? Our members want you to always think positively about BA. They care passionately about caring for you.
Thats why they called a 12 day strike at Christmas to screw you over, and why they want to target your school holidays.
But three times in the past two years they have voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action at the airline. How could this happen at a once-great British brand?
Because they can't add up the number of members they have and hold a legal ballot.
These are the same courteous, professional people that take care of passengers and help you choose to fly with BA. Other airlines are proud of their cabin crew. They choose them to be their public face.
Not Virgin, who use models in their adverts. BA's adverts always feature the BA amabassadors, real life BA employees.
Not BA. It is now better known for industrial confrontation than for passenger comfort. What a turnaround for what was once the "world's favourite airline".
I doubt the customer surveys would agree with that.
Unite cabin crew members at BA are mainly female, working mums.
I doubt the People departments statisticians would agree with that.
They are proud of their airline and proud of the qualities that make it admired the world over. The vast majority will dedicate 25 years or more service to the airline. Many will never earn more than £25k per annum for skills that stretch from life saver to linguist.
Many hate the airline and everything it stands for, and hate their colleagues too. Many will work for 25 years, earning far more than £25K, simply because they cannot find such a well paying job elsewhere.
In return, they expect respect. They are the professional, friendly people that make BA what it was – a world class brand.
Lots of things made BA a world class brand, not just cabin crew.
They will also not tolerate bullying. That is why they are standing up against the sacking of 18 cabin crew and disciplining of scores more as BA exacts revenge on the thousands of crew who took lawful industrial action last year.
Sacked for assault, making death threats, harassment, vandalism, absenteeism outside industrial action, interference with investigations, redirecting commercial web traffic to gay porn, and other things.
Bullying, intimidation, legal threats – anything but listening to their own employees from BA's lawyer-led management.
They've listened repeatedly, but they won't give in to BASSAs demands, which is what Unites real problem is.
That is what stands in he way of peace at BA – a board that prefers litigation to negotiation.
A board that will litigate when the union won't negotiate.
Two years ago, a battle over standards at the airline began; it was never about money.
So it's all about the customer then?
Indeed it could still be solved without costing BA a penny. But it will never be solved by bullying. As many times as BA force us to reballot our members, we will do so. The spirit of BA cabin crew will never be broken.
And we'll ballot and ballot and ballot until we are sick! (But we'll never mount an effective strike).