I don't really care who is right over the figures, what really counts is can the strike actually achieve anything. BA seemed to cope last time reasonably well. Yes, there were cancellations and sub charters, and yes, to achieve what they did BA had to go to some abnormal measures to achieve it, but they did. What does anyone think will be different about the next strike? Why will that succeed rather than make BA even more entrenched in their position? Why will the unions efforts be more successful in forcing BA's hand this time?
I support MF in their attempts to get better T&C's as the original promise was industry standard plus 10%, which they are nowhere near achieving. I'm just not convinced that they will achieve anything better than the inflation busting offer of 4.6% that they have on the table. Whatever they achieve will be the baseline minimum ask for ALL the other workgroups that exist within BA for their next pay round, so you cannot view this one dispute in isolation wrt cost.
BA will be factoring in the cost of the additional salary to ALL work groups that will inevitably follow any bigger settlement with MF. This additional cost will be BA's war chest to cover the extreme measures they need to put in place to beat this current strike.
Even with 2900 UNITE members who all strike, (an unlikely situation), given the c150000 cabin crew in BA, how truly effective can this strike really be?
It is good news though for EF and WW, as MF have just clearly demonstrated that having 3 distinct work groups as CC can effectively blunt any IA from a single group. Has anyone else wondered why the mutterings and rumours of the demise of EF have declined in parallel with the increasing severity of the MF dispute? Coincidence or a realisation from BA that perhaps EF and WW are valuable as a foil for MF?
Last edited by Juan Tugoh; 15th Jan 2017 at 12:50.