I am shocked by the statistic about pilots being 7% of headcount and 18% of salaries - judging by the salaries of the junior pilots it seems to me that the simple fact is that senior crews are paid far too much and are reliant on terms and conditions negotiated when the airline was state owned and there was no competition. How in heavens name you can complain about the Im dept who are 4% of headcount and 4% of salaries I have no idea. I work in this area and I can assure you that Im has had significant problems retaining skilled staff who for much of the last few years could have left BA (and did)for far higher salaries elsewhere. One of the reasons Im became so reliant on contractor staff was because they simply couldn't recruit anyone with the necessary skills for the salaries they were paying. We ended up in the ludicrous position of paying Contractors huge sums because they didn't appear on headcount figures! To make matters worse we - the already underpaid of Im - are being asked to take pay cuts whilst many flight crew (who we have been assured for years are Managers in the business) are protected.
I am also shocked by the fact that most of you seem willing to throw anybody else out of the organisation in order to feather your own nests. CSD's are people with years and years of experience - they have to manage 400 pax, a dozen staff, work unsocial hours as you do away from their families and are the customer service face of BA more than any of the rest of us. Surely they deserve to earn a decent wage on which a family can be supported? I have to say I have found this attitude by pilots all too common - you see yourselves as the elite and view everyone else as expendable.
As for the Managers - I have read some crap in my time but this takes the biscuit - there is no manager of warm rolls I can assure you! Managers total around 3000 in an organisation of 60000 I make that 1/20 which is small beer and its effect on the wage bill trivial as your own statistics show.
It's time the flight crew (many of whom earn 6 figure salaries and recline in 5 star hotels for much of the year) realised they are at least as much a part of the problem as any other part of the organisation.
This airline is in a mess and we must all shoulder the burden of preserving it.
Desk-pilot