Ok, I know that the majority of people commenting on this topic are not directly involved with the dispute, and so none of us will ever be in a position to completely understand the exact implications of this new clocking in/out system.
My understanding of the situation (which may be totally incorrect), is by word of mouth from colleagues and friends, and via the media, and what I see is similar to what BA's passengers and investors will see. Alienating your passengers is bad enough, but at times like these, you cannot afford to alienate your investors as well!! Ba are fortuante enough to have a small money reserve, but prolonged strikes will use that money damn quick and potentially cripple the airline. Why do you want to risk undoing the good that has been done by the recent restructuring? Everyone has worked so hard, and made numerous sacrifices to ensure that BA has reduced debts and is more competitive, what a waste it is to give that up because of a more modern clocking in/out system!!
I work at LGW S and all I can say, is that last weekend was manic, but thanks BA CSAs for putting all those extra passengers our way, it certainly doesn't harm our customer airlines, and I know that Easyjet were more than grateful for those thousands of extra passengers!!!
What are the CSAs really worried about? Job cuts? Well, if the teams have too many workers, then why shouldn't BA be allowed to juggle things around and make redundancies? Customer services agents work shift work, so none of them are in the job because it gives them the ability to take their kids to school at 9am, go to work, and be back at school at 4pm! Shift work isn't like that! If BA really wanted to see how their current shift patterns, and the number of CSAs on duty are various times of the day, is working, they can already get that information from the rosters and the manual clock in/out sheets. Making the system automated will not greatly help BA make changes to shift patterns and numbers on duty.
Also, do these strikes not jeopardise the ground handling contracts that BA has at LHR. Why should other airlnes put up with these strikes and cancellations when there are other ground handlers at LHR, not on strike, who would be more than happy for the chance to increase their contracts? The strikes could lead to the lose of contracts, which would definitely then lead to job cuts!!!
Finally, it just seems like the same old BA story. The workers have become so accustomed to a safe life, that the word 'CHANGE' is mentioned and everyone panics! Go with the flow - provided that what BA is proposing isn't completely unfair, and that the changes will not affected your contracted working hours each week (i.e if you are contracted to work 38 hours a week, does it matter if BA change the times of your shifts as long as they don't change the total number of hours?) Hold more talks, don't strike and you will all have jobs this time next month.
Strike and we will see BA sink. BMI will say thank you for the shorthaul routes, Virgin will get the expansion at LHR they want with the additions of thousands of longhaul slots, and the two companies will not have even had to merge like they are discussing at the moment.
Finally, if you don't like it at BA, try it at one of the ground handling agents at LGW S. Worse pay, very few perks, and we don't have the benefit of the airport closing from 10pm to 5am!!! We are rostered on anytime from midnight to midnight!!! Also, our work load is massively higher, I would like to see the CSAs at BA checking in 6 charter flights (all 767s or 757s), all of those check-in opened at 4am, all of which departed between 0655 and 0715, with just 8 agents checking in these flights. Thats about 200 passengers per agent in just 3 hours!!! And our flights still go on time!!!