Are you sure you're not management Corelli? Anybody who joined BA in the last 7 years has joined on relatively inferior pay. These people now make up almost half of all flight crew. Are we any closer to forcing pay up for everybody? Not really. Its all well and good saying 'I'm alright Jack, let the newbies suffer', but when they're in the majority you'll need their support when the company turns its greedy eye on you. If management have their way the next intake of BA pilots won't have a final salary pension scheme, nor I suspect will the nexy intake of BACE pilots. Do you think they'll support you when the company tries to end a pension scheme they don't even belong to, or will you reap what you sow? If you think theres a finite point where people will cease to fly because the pay is too poor then you've been in the industry too long. Cast a glance over some of the Wannabees sites sometimes and occasionally you'll find people willing to work for nothing. After all if they're prepared to go £50k in debt to get the licence what difference does another £15K make to support your first pay free year?
Your point is that BA pilots should not hurt current members of the BA group to protect people who haven't even joined. Well the current RJ deal already hurts members of the BA group, the BA pilots. Yes, they can move to LHR, but the job is about quality of life, not just money. By all means put the right size aircraft on the route, but the RJ is only 16 seats smaller than a 319 and putting cheaper pilots on it is not going to make the operation profitable any more than putting air taxi pilots on your ERJs. You assume the current deal is benefit neutral to BA pilots. I think your assumption is wrong and the deal is to the detriment of BA pilots on the whole. To use your argument, why should we as BA pilots sign a deal that doesn't benefit us in order to support a group of pilots who haven't joined BA but seem determined to undermine us?
As I understand your argument, you think BA, BACE, GB etc pilots should stand together against management, but also that BACE should take over the RJ fleet and then maybe eventually the whole of short haul too? Leaving BA mainline as a long haul only fleet perhaps? Well wheres the benefit in that for me? Experience has shown that you've more chance of getting blood out of a stone than negotiating B or C scale salaries up, so that leaves me on my B scale facing either a life in longhaul or a return to short haul on condition of accepting a C scale BACE salary, and thats not a road I wish to go down. Any encroachment by BACE into mainline work is a loss of opportunity for me, if not a loss of cash. If a line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere, then so long as we are represented by different BALPA CCs the only place we in BA can draw it is under our seniority list. If BACE want to join BA, as some may, then lets work on a system where they join our seniority list on mainline pay. In conjunction the BACE CC can work on improving pay within BACE. Transferring work from BA mainline T & Cs to BACE T & Cs is not a solution or an acceptable course of action to us. We are competing against a lot of other carriers, both high fares and low fares, but don't forget that Lufthansa, KLM, Air France, Easyjet and Go all pay their pilots more than the BA B-scale. Introducing a C scale into the equation is not going to make a jot of difference to our profitability.
Last edited by Hand Solo; 17th September 2002 at 12:52.