What are the odds of a major UK airline being in a fight for survival and in dispute with a major section of its workforce for over two years, which has cost more than the required savings from that section, still being here today?
100% self evidently. BA's management strategy was obviously approved by the investors and bankers, allowing BA to continue trading despite posting successive enormous losses followed by a tiny profit.
Is the penny finally dropping that the rhetoric is not the sole property of one camp?
BA are of course entitled to use rhetoric, just as BASSA are.
But the rhetoric will not solve anything from either camp and it is pointless for interested parties and managers alike to carry it on. Flap62 is correct to a point.
I dont agree. Opinion is everything, and is shaped by rhetoric. From what we have heard, many BASSA members listen only to BASSA and ignore/dont read anything from BA. If true, the leadership of BASSA are the only people who can solve this dispute peacefully should they choose to do so.
You have to look at the demands made by both branches and discuss them. Is there opportunity to return to the pre dispute crew complements? Yes, but you pull the part timers back onto full time and use new contract staff.
Additional crew will cost money whatever fleet is used. That cost will have to come from somewhere. Further, what would you say to those BASSA members who opted for a part time from a lifestyle choice that their union now tells them they must return to fulltime work?
Make the MTP contractual and negotiable.
BA may well agree to make it contractual and negotiable. Do you think BASSA will agree to the negotiable part?
Say ok, agree to binding arbitration, but anyone that is found against on an item that could be deemed criminal, will be pursued through the criminal system.
BA have already offered arbitration. Are you saying reinstate those found guilty of gross misconduct unless its criminal?
Staff travel: reinstate it with length of service set but with the dispute 'length taken away and rounded up to the nearest year, pending any ECoHR decision on the legality of punitive measures for protected industrial action.
ST removal was/is a useful tool employed by BA to deter strike action. Unite are set to take BA to court over the legality of this approach. They therefore have no need to include this requirement in any settlement, particularly a settlement that from your list effectively goes back to where things were before all this started.
Then have a serious look at the CSD/Purser grades based on how much and the way they are paid and I am not talking about cuts in the levels.
I'm not sure I follow this. Are you proposing a pay rise for CSD's in exchange for them reverting back to an easier workload?. Some would say that if BA had offered this at the start while imposing cuts elsewhere (eg Gatwick) a dispute with BASSA would never have arisen.
BA need the current crew and each new employee acts as a duplicated cost, until the equivalent existing crew member leaves, unless the average existing crew member earns over £15000 in allowances per year, so the negotiations being over are not true, in my opinion.
That is working on an assumption that BA will maintain current flight schedules and thus crewing requirements. BA may be set to open up lots of new routes, or to close many. We don't know.
There will be a tipping point when the new are larger than the old, but the financial state of the business may be more buoyant then, which adds weight to any future discussions.
The financial state of the company depends on both revenue and costs. Your proposed settlement adds to the latter without anyclear benefit to the former (other than the removal of short-term IA losses in revenue).
I believe that Bassa will deliver another vote with convincing numbers and 6000 is a convincing number. It will be interesting if the 3000 invisible voters turn up in the yes or no camp, or that 3000 reduces along with union membership and therefore the number of ballot papers issued.
I agree. And I think they would likely still vote to strike even if BA offered your proposals exactly as written.