Originally Posted by
Count Niemantznarr
Mr Bunker, Mr Benoulli, Wibblestorm and others like you who spent hours criticising BA's cabin crew here on PPRUNE, and now in such a short amount of time will suffer, this enormous reversal of fortune.
The actions of hundreds of BA pilots weakened trade unionism at BA. Indeed one of your BALPA reps even had to resign temporarily, so he could fly as a vonlunteer cabin crew member. If the cabin crew had of achieved a better result without the interference of BA's flight crew, which greatly undermined and influenced the course of the dispute, every group of workers in BA would be in better shape to face down an aggressive opportunist like Walsh.
BA flight crew are now damned whichever way they turn. In many ways their predicament is worse than the cabin crew.
One point at a time.
1) No we won't. We're negotiating to integrate new joiners onto the same "fleet" if you like. You negotiated away the right to integrate mixed fleet. That means you're dead on the vine. There'll never be any new legacy cabin crew. We're ensuring the survival, albeit on revised terms, of the "legacy" flight crew. Except we're not legacy - we'll still be the one and only pilot body in BA. We've one seniority list. We don't have LGW, LGW(LCY sub fleet) EF, WW and MF. Everyone's on the same list. Everyone.
2) Trades unionism in BA and the wider UK was weakened by successive legislation and by a series of spectacularly poorly thought out industrial actions. Including your own. It's telling that yet again you choose to focus on the pilots on the reason your strike failed. Remember more members of your own mother union, Unite, crossed the picket line either as non-striking cabin crew or as volunteers than ever did pilots. We were relatively too busy flying the planes still. Half your colleagues went in and the majority of the VCC were made up of ground branches. "Our" influence on your dispute was collectively modest. But that doesn't suit the "we hate flight crew and all they do to us" motif, does it? So crack on, point out how we wielded such influence. After all, if we did, we'd be able to negotiate anything we liked with the boss wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?
3) Again we're not damned. We're negotiating for a slice of the future. It might be a slimmer slice but it's a slice nonetheless. The clever machinations of BASSA et al have left you with a dead and diminishing body. Wonder how small Willy will let you get before you become a total irrelevance. That's why we're still fighting hard to have BMI integrated, so we're still an existing and growing collective body. Do tell me though, for a laugh, how our predicament is any worse than the one you placed yourselves squarely in?
Anyway don't you have to be off filling in the anonymous feedback survey about upgrades and other things you want to stamp your foot about?
That all said, we've been round this merry-go-round before and we know we won't agree. You'll never answer the questions and I'll never agree with your hollow rhetoric so shall we let the thread get back to the whys and wherefores of the possible integration of BMI and you can tell everyone elsewhere how you socked another bullseye to the gullible flight crew?