BA Strike / Qantas Conditions Comparison

[bucky1]

I may get shot down here but I have read through close to 60 pages about the BA crew negotiations, and am still unclear about about the actual reasons for the strike. Is it mainly due to reduced crew complements and introduction of newfleet? If so, doesn't this just bring BA in line with Qantas when Qantas reduced cabin crew complements accross the board and introdudued the QCCA payscale / A380 crew pool?

[Eddy]

doesn't this just bring BA in line with Qantas when Qantas reduced cabin crew complements accross the board and introdudued the QCCA payscale / A380 crew pool?Those two elements do, yeah. And do you (if you're QF crew) wish you'd worked harder to prevent the new conditions/fleet from coming to fruition?

[bucky1]

That's a hard question to answer, and in light of what's happening at BA at the moment, one we've been discussing alot over the past weeks.

In hindsight, alot of us think that we shouldn't have agreed to the QCCA payscale, it really has just diminished our bargaining power in the future.

With regards to the crew complements, we never had any say in the matter. We are now working harder than ever, and the crew complement levels are almost unworkable on some flights. Some days you wake up and know what's in store for you (especially in economy), and it is very difficult to go to work. We are so under crewed that alot of the time the service is an embarrassment...especially when you see the Qantas advertising where passengers are promised everything...what a different scenario it is onboard!!!

However, the main thing that has come out of the above is that no Australian based cabin crew were made redundant (although all our crew in the Bangkok base lost their jobs). If we didn't agree to the QCCA payscale (like new fleet), there would have been compulsory redundancies amongst the Australian bases.

I'm glad we're all still employed, hard as it is.