LB,
It's exceedingly rare that I disagree with you but on this occasion I must. The company hasn't claimed it is still in a fight for survival for, indeed, some time now. None of us will ever know (despite our own personal theories) how close we came as, I'd wager, that information is profoundly commercially sensitive but the fact remains that barring one group of staff, everyone else deemed that it was serious enough at the time to warrant the concessions that were made. To allow BASSA et al to return to pre-dispute crewing levels because we're no longer in a fight is to allow the same festering IR problem to submerge and await the next time that BA need their employees behind them. In essence it endorses the say no long enough and they'll go away policy that seems to be at the heart of any IR strategy employed by BASSA/Amicus. BA has a long and painful history of effectively rewarding recalcitrance and militancy - it appears to have changed and, I'm afraid, having been on the back of a hefty paycut myself (regardless of the ill-informed spin from elsewhere) that I simply cannot countenance that allowing the union to effectively retire to the sidelines without being fully and wholeheartedly aware that such behaviour in the future will not be tolerated merely leaves us open for the next hissy fit. And I use those last words deliberately.
As ever,
MrB