British Airways - CC Industrial Relations Mk VI

[Snas]

but if a strike lasts for more than three days then the strikers are paid from day 1.

How do they know who the strikers are?
Easy in a factory or a mine perhaps, but cabin crew?

[Basil]

Staff travel is at the sole discretion of BA. It can be withdrawn at any time. You have no recourse.
How do I know this? It has happened to BA retired staff. Not withdrawn in its entirety but gone from 'in perpetuity' to '= length of service'.
I understand that a few staff have ST as a contractual right and that they are mostly in IT. I could be wrong there but that was the rumour. It was also rumoured that some IT staff have an enhanced DoJ for ST.

[Litebulbs]

Hmm, this is a nice glass of red................

Am I one of the tiny minority that believes that there will be a negotiated settlement to this deal, without IA?

[Classic]

Litebulbs,

I think you probably are, I'm afraid.

WW will not give an inch, he really does hold the aces in his hand.

Bassa have no leverage, only the big weapon, which BA can deal with. Bassa would have to spin a climbdown of epic proportions to walk away with a deal acceptable to BA, and I really don't think they have it in them to do that.

This is why he got the job, and you have to admit, it couldn't have gone better for him so far.

[FlexSRS]

Unite in last-ditch bid to avert BA strike | Business | guardian.co.uk

It is understood that, as well as saving money, the proposals address Unite's concerns over staffing levels on flights and BA's plan to introduce new cabin crew recruits on a separate fleet.

So, today, BASSA have been scrabbling around working out how they can save £60m so they can put a crew member back on, and rescue the CSD from a fate worse than death - working on a trolley! As WW said, why on earth would the 13 other crew on a 747 want to take a paycut of about £2000-2500 a year just so the CSD can go back to what they were doing (or not doing) before?

I mean, we all know there is going to be a huge element of face saving at play here; BASSA have painted themselves in to a corner, and even though most crew would probably choose '1-down' as a painless way of saving cash, they can't admit to that, but I have to say I am almost impressed at the way High Command are still flogging this dead-horse of crew-levels.

I am particularly keen on seeing just what exactly they will have the 'proles' do to get what they want! What intriguing selection of painful cuts that the membership doesn't want will they offer up in sacrifice? I reckon a lovely smorgasbord of things like early starts, late finishes, fixed links and cheapo African trips for Eurofleet, perhaps a bit more of a paycut for LGW "they're mostly students anyway", less hotel upgrades for Pursers and below, and all Indian trips to go to New Fleet? That should do it.

As BASSA members, I assume crew have been fully consulted on exactly what sort of cuts and savings would be acceptable to them? The mix of pay and productivity? I expect BASSA have carried out extensive polling? Sought your opinions? Held some workshops to discuss the potential ramifications etc? - Of course not!

Dear crew, in the desperate fight to the bitter end, when they have to throw everything at the glorious fight for CSDs to be freed from their trolleys, watch your family silver and meal breaks be sold from under your noses, but fear not comrades, it is for a higher cause!

[Litebulbs]

Classic

I may be on here, but this is not a true and balanced representation of what is going on. I was watching "This Week" earlier, where there were clips of PMQ's, with Unite getting a mention, especially about bankrolling Labour. OK, Hague did better than Harman, but Unite was bandied across the House. Then Mrs Abbot commented that the Labour Party is skint.

A week is a long time in politics, but if this weeks polls are anything to go by, it will be Mr Brown in No 10, not Mr Airbrush. I was in a conversation, no that is not true, I was sitting round a table listening to Derrick Simpson a few years back, when he was suggesting the reasons why it was so important that Amicus and the T&G merged. The most fundamental reason, was the power to effectively lobby Government and 2 million voters is a big voice.

As more than a few people has suggested, this is not just about BASSA now, this is political at a parliamentary level. I am sure LHR slots will come into conversation at some point.

That is why I do not think there will be a strike.

But I have been on the red!

[wiggy]

It's probably been political at a very high level since the December ballot result. Problem is ( as I understand it, ready to be corrected) whilst UNITE hold the purse strings BASSA "own" the ballot result. So the question is are the BASSA Reps prepared to listen to anybody outside their own circle of acolytes. If those are determined to go out in a blaze of "glory", as they would see it, or fancy the Thelma and Louise ending , I'm not sure anyone can actually stop them other then other BASSA members.

Nevertheless I reckon they're under just a bit of pressure..and not just from BA.

(edit: Litebulbs, not sure about your LHR slot comment; are you implying the Labour Government would threaten BA with slot removal? I'm not sure they are in position to do this...)

[spin_doctor]

What do we want? Less Money!

OK, this really is getting bizarre. If I understand correctly the point of the recent ballot was that BASSA is complaining that their members didn't get a pay cut, which they are now desperately trying to negotiate.

Who on earth are these people, who are they working for?

[GS-Alpha]

To be fair, a negotiated permanent pay cut would have been a good plan for BASSA. BA would have gone for that but obviously the sticking point would have been its size. A negotiated cut in pay is always better than a non-negotiated one. Right now, New Fleet is coming, and the cabin crew no longer 'own their future'... Control over the size of their oncoming pay cut a few years down the line is rapidly slipping through their fingers.

The biggest problem with the negotiations has been that BASSA has not appreciated that BA set the size of the target, allowing some negotiation over how it is met, but the size was not negotiable downwards. BASSA have only very very recently realised that they have been trying to negotiate something that is not negotiable. They have been trying to talk about the wrong stuff!

A negotiated settlement in name, might happen. It would certainly be the best outcome BASSA can hope for but ultimately, BA will not reverse any of the current changes. The negotiation I speak of could come from the New Fleet talks and Disruption agreement, but I think BASSA are too far gone to seize even that opportunity.

[Litebulbs]

GS-Alpha

Originally Posted by GS-Alpha

The biggest problem with the negotiations has been that BASSA has not appreciated that BA set the size of the target, allowing some negotiation over how it is met, but the size was not negotiable downwards. BASSA have only very very recently realised that they have been trying to negotiate something that is not negotiable. They have been trying to talk about the wrong stuff!

A negotiated settlement in name, might happen. It would certainly be the best outcome BASSA can hope for but ultimately, BA will not reverse any of the current changes..

I am glad you have said this. I tried to mention this many threads ago, but was politely rebutted (well sort of). So many people have stated that it is BASSA and Unites fault for not negotiating, BUT if it was as you say and the total was never negotiable, but all you could do was decide which bit of flesh you would have to chop off, then that is hardly a fair discussion. That is why we are where we are today.

BA are returning to profitability and loads are growing again. BASSA offered a temporary solution, which was not accepted. In 2 years, if BA are making £800m of which £150m is out of the pocket of its employees, then would that be fair?

[cym]

Yes, because their CC cost base would then be comparable with market rate and even carry a 10% premium!

Its called living in the real world!

[wascrew]

yes

Litebulbs

``BA are returning to profitability and loads are growing again. BASSA offered a temporary solution, which was not accepted. In 2 years, if BA are making £800m of which £150m is out of the pocket of its employees, then would that be fair?``

YES!!

As a shareholder and traveller it is in my interest to hold shares in a company that makes a profit so it can invest and compete against the service levels of the increasing competition out there and service its` massive pension defecit.Also they may be able to pay me a dividend for my investment.
For too many years BA has been run for the benfit of its` staff imho (being prepared to be shot down in flames for that comment.) The alternative simply is to carry on as before and go bust! I`ll remind you BA is no longer nationalised and firmly in the private sector!
Maybe the CC should hedge against this by sharing in the companys possible future success by opting for share bonuses.

[Snas]

BA strike decision held till next week - Channel 4 News

I guess this was to be expected, but on it drags....

Union bosses had said travellers would discover today whether strike action would be taken, but now say BA will be given the weekend to think through the latest proposal to resolve the row.

[JayPee28bpr]

Litebulbs #1918

I was sitting round a table listening to Derrick Simpson a few years back, when he was suggesting the reasons why it was so important that Amicus and the T&G merged. The most fundamental reason, was the power to effectively lobby Government and 2 million voters is a big voice.

I must admit this made me chuckle when I read it. I can just imagine similar cozy chats with Derrick if two large employers decided to combine and cited "economies of scale" or "leverage over government2 as reasons to do it. In the private sector we either get referred to the Competition Commission (for the former reason), or prosecuted under bribery laws (for the latter).

Of course Derrick (and you) make the fundamental mistake of thinking you can actually deliver 2,000,000 votes to anyone. A quick re-read of British politics from 1979-1997 should disabuse you of this notion. Many Trade Unionists clearly voted Conservative in that period, and many supported Thatcher's reform of TU law. If that wasn't the case, Labour would not have had to endorse it in order to return to power, eventually, in 1997. And in the current BA dispute, unless you buy into the "Willie is just a liar" argument, then he has 6,000 volunteers from an overwhelmingly unionised workforce to break a strike by another highly unionised bit of the workforce. Derrick can't even deliver one bit of his BA workforce to another, so he isn't delivering 2 million votes to Labour, just £10 million of his members' money. Like I say, in the private sectior we tend to get prosecuted for that kind of thing.

I must say that I think you're delusional if you really believe anyone in Unite cares one iota about BA's cabin crew. I'll put that down to it being late when you posted and due to the comfort of a good bottle of red. Consider the facts, though. This dispute involves 12,000 people, none of whom are being made compulsorily redundant, and none of whom are taking a pay cut. BA has just asked for productivity improvements, and imposed them when they felt negotiations were going nowhere. Now, tell me where most of Unite's workers work. I'm guessing the public sector. That's the public sector which, ex health and international aid, is going to endure a 10% cut in reources in future years. And that's per Alastair Darling's numbers, not George Osbourne's. In staff terms, that equates to anything between 500,000 and 1,000,000 public sector jobs that will be cut over the next 10 years. That's a lot of membership fees at risk. And the nightmare scenario is a Conservative government that uses the cull as an opportunity to break Unions' power in the public sector, which is still very strong. That is Unite's concern. We're already beginning to hear rumbles about redundancies in local authorities, eg 2,000 in Birmingham I think. There was a survey (on the BBC I think), that suggested 10% of all local authority jobs might be at risk.

So, Unite's only concern in the BA dispute is to prevent a strike during the election campaign that risks damaging Labour. I don't agree with you that Labour are going to win the election. Even if they do it is likely to be without overall control of the Commons, and the Lib Dems will not support a government led by Brown. Unite's best hope is for a non-Labour government that can be ousted after one term, or even a shortened term if it results in an unstable coalition or minority government. And a BA strike now would damage Labour, given the '70s style rhetoric being spouted by BASSA.

So, I agree there will be a negotiated settlement, though it will pretty much be on BA's terms and will involve the bulk of BASSA's reps leaving BA so as to prevent a repeat performance in a year or two's time. Unite will support their dismissal privately though, of course, complain bitterly in public. Significantly, such a move would not stop a deal being signed, and there will be no strike threat in support of them.

That's my take as an outsider rather than an inhabitant of the "BA Bubble".

[Clarified]

Yes Lightbulbs I think it is fair.

The company has not changed my T & C 's, in fact throughout the 12 months it has sought to protect them.
It is not realistic to think we don't have to work harder or take restructuring, everyone else has! That wouldn't be fair on them would it.
It's how the world works, I do not enjoy the pension rights more senior crew get, equally post 1997 crew do not get the pre 1997 salaries. It's all transparent, you knew that when you signed up.
In my opinion fairness is about protecting those in the business as much as possible and allowing the company to compete on a level playing field, market rates etc. fair all round.

We all benefit from a strong company.

My opinion on previous post, not my employers or any other party.

[Diplome]

From the Channel 4 story linked to previously:

Ken Ablard, BASSA spokesperson states:

"As far as we are concerned this proposal gives them the saving that they (BA) wanted to make – about £58m.

Setting aside BASSA's past difficulty with assessing the true value of its savings proposals, the problem is simply that BA already has the solution in place and Mr. Walsh has firmly stated that the imposition will stand.

..and BASSA blinks again, with the strike call delayed, again, until next Monday or Tuesday.

Am I the only one with the vision of the unions involved scrambling frantically to get themselves out of a situation of their making while BA calmly goes about doing its best to find savings, negotiate and protect the airline from this attempt to bring it down?

[JayPee28bpr]

Litebulbs - again!

BA are returning to profitability and loads are growing again. BASSA offered a temporary solution, which was not accepted. In 2 years, if BA are making £800m of which £150m is out of the pocket of its employees, then would that be fair?

As I have mentioned before, BA's share price has declined from 578p to 210p over the last three years. The losses of 2008-9 and 2009-10 will have depleted shareholders' funds by roughly half. Set in that context, the modest reductions in staff earnings across BA appear very fair to me. If a "temporary solution" were to be agreed, then at the very least it would have to last until BA's shareholders have recouped their 50% loss of value, ie until the company doubles in size. That will be rather more than 2 years. Rather than arguing over how long is "temporary", Unite would be better advised to include a long term incentive plan as part of any settlement with BA, so that staff share in the upside equitably with the providers of capital.

I think you fall into the trap of viewing industrial relations as a zero sum game: "if BA wins I must have lost". It isn't. It is possible to craft agreements whereby all stakeholders win. However, to do that you need to understand the motivation and requirements of other stakeholders. BASSA/Unite appears unable to widen its horizons sufficiently to achieve this. BA as an organisation cannot afford to be so myopic and, if one participant to the game cannot accept the ground rules, then it must simply be removed in order to protect the interests of all others. The fact that even other employee groups clearly have no sympathy for the BASS/Unite position ought to have had alarm bells clanging much sooner than now. To continue the sporting analogy, BASSA/Unite are only now moving towards playing to everyone else's rules having already been expelled from the league by unanimous agreement of all other teams.

[Papillon]

if BA are making £800m of which £150m is out of the pocket of its employees, then would that be fair?

All profits are out of the pocket of employees. Companies (in the purest terms) employ people to make more money out of them in profit than they cost to employ. If that isn't true of a particular sector of employees, then the company must change that. To turn it the other way around, is it fair that £150 million of the current losses has gone into the pockets of one sector of staff*?

No company can base its staff costs on making a profit only when times are good.

*Not that simple of course, but it illustrates the point.

[HiFlyer14]

GS-Alpha

To be fair, a negotiated permanent pay cut would have been a good plan for BASSA.

...but not for it's members. Every single cabin crew member that you ever come into contact with will tell you "I'm prepared to work harder, I don't want to lose any money."

So, why, oh why do BASSA keep banging on about a pay cut? Because, as pointed out before on this thread, the crew complement reductions are causing BASSA to have a pay cut - in lost membership fees. They would rather WE take the hit, than them. No thank you. CABIN CREW DO NOT WANT A PAY CUT and moreover, we don't have to take one to achieve the required savings, so why should BASSA insist on one?

Right now, New Fleet is coming, and the cabin crew no longer 'own their future'... Control over the size of their oncoming pay cut a few years down the line is rapidly slipping through their fingers.

How would a pay cut now protect us against New Fleet happening in the future? It would be no protection whatsoever.

Most crew would rather "work harder", and have some form of protection against New Fleet. That could easily have been done by:
a. A negotiated monthly payment to protect our future income
b. A calculated formula for the transfer of routes over to New Fleet.

Guess what? BA have offered both of those things. The Professional Cabin Crew Council would jump at the chance to be able to negotiate them.

If the talks that are going on at the moment are centred around us taking a pay cut, then I predict No Deal and Unite are simply wasting everyone's time, while running a good business into the ground. This quote seems apt:

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
John F. Kennedy 1917-63: inaugural address, 20 January 1961

I fear that Unite are guilty of both, and that does not bode well for our community.

I am BA cabin crew and this is my own viewpoint and not that of BA.

[Re-Heat]

BA are returning to profitability and loads are growing again. BASSA offered a temporary solution, which was not accepted. In 2 years, if BA are making £800m of which £150m is out of the pocket of its employees, then would that be fair?

Profitability, or a decent return on capital for investors who have had no dividends for a long time (one year-end excepted), and who are largely represented by pension funds anyway...?

Problem is, that you have the rest of the workforce - you revert to pre-recession Ts & Cs for all, and you have no profitability anyway. BA were not averse to inserting some form of profit-share / share option scheme as we well know that was part of the negotiation for other groups.

Let me address you point head-on: if one were to suggest that all was temporary and that all could revert to the way it was before post-crisis, that still does not address the fact that (a) regardless of bottom-line profitability, and (b) even accounting for a % return on capital for investors, that the airline is not operating with a similar free cashflow % at the end of the day that enables it to reinvest in new aircraft and maintain a business model in the long-run against Asian airlines who have a substantially lower cost base and younger fleet.

Profitability in itself is not an achievement - cashflow for dividends after reinvestment in assets and positioning for growth is.

I'm not going to go on and discuss financial structuring in detail, but I just wanted to address that one point that you have brought up a few times head-on.

Operating at anything other than market rates is, in the long-run, hindering the long-term success of the business, which is more important to achieve the goal of filling the NAPS hole, to enable most of the current workforce to actually retire on a livable salary.

Think of it this way - that is someone's £xbn tied up in the capital of the airline that bought its entire asset base from which it operates. Pension funds are the largest investor community in companies, though investment managers.

Going for companies' jugular is cutting of the nose to spite the face - the government is not able to fund the hole as it has squandered the tax windfalls of the past 15 years.