BA CC industrial relations (current airline staff only)

[Cough]

Originally Posted by Miss M

You say that an awful lot of people in BA are fed up with the BASSA militant die-hards. Did you ever stop to think that we are possibly fed up with other people interfering our dispute?

Ever thought the rest of the company are fed up with a single group threatening our livelihood and company?

[Caribbean Boy]

MrBunker wrote:

For the avoidance of any doubt I bear you no ill-will but I do think you tend to the philosophy of trying to write the ground rules of such issues to suit your argument and then argue from that starting point rather than debating the issues themselves as they present, not as you seem to wish to, i.e, apportion blame for your unhappiness in the manner of their presentation, or their very existence in the first place. It smacks of a lack of personal and collective responsibility to me.

Those ground rules include striking for the cause, like protecting existing T&Cs, even if it means that BA goes bust.

[RadarIdent]

You say that an awful lot of people in BA are fed up with the BASSA militant die-hards. Did you ever stop to think that we are possibly fed up with other people interfering our dispute?

Curious to know how you would react MissM, if the situation was reversed.

Lets suppose that you are a member of staff that, throughout the past five years, had adapted to change of working practise, witnessed job outsourcing, job cuts, increased workload etc etc, as indeed all your colleagues have witnessed.

Then you are mindful of a significant sized department that says 'no, no, no', refuses to negotiate, are also unreasonable in other areas, threaten strike action (again) and jeopordize the very company you work for and all that comes with job security/insecurity in an era of recession and global downturn.

Can you at least see a crumb of understanding as to why many are fed up with the 'BASSA militant die-hards'?

[Yellow Pen]

Originally Posted by MissM

People applying for MF are probably doing it for many different reasons but many are undoubtedly doing it because they get to wear the BA uniform and really don't care about the package itself.

Could you explain why that is a bad thing?

[gingerminge]

Honestly yellow pen what a daft thing to ask.

The next point you will be making is people should be paying BA for the honour of wearing the BA uniform.

[Sunshine Express]

Firstly, I would like to state that it is such a shame for all our really great Cabin Crew that we are in this situation. Next, that I really do feel that Unite/BASSA/Amicus have badly let their members down.

With regard to Duncan's latest posting....

This is the best written and convincing argument that I have read from him, however, please stop and think about what he hasn't written.

He lists 4 objections/suggestions to the present offer.

No mention of reduced crewing levels imposed by BA (the original dispute), so that is OK.
No mention of New Fleet/Mixed Fleet, imposed by BA since the dispute, so that's OK.
No mention of an improved pay offer which would be affordable as New Fleet cost savings are in addition to the targeted cost savings of the reduced crew levels.

Still with me? What does he actually ask for?

1. Reinstatement of staff travel with all perks immediately reinstated. [for when I get my job back and long into retirement].

2. I demand yet another hearing to get MY job back.

3. Sickness during strike. Probably doesn't affect "me" but worth a go

4. When I have MY job back, I want/demand as much time off as I choose for supposed union duties.

Read it again below and ask yourself, what is he asking for your benefit?


"Firstly, there must be a complete return of staff travel with all its seniority. To accept a company have the right to punish people who legally withdraw their labour is to accept the end for trade unionism...end off. This punishment has already been in place 7 months now and, for people like Brendan Barber of the TUC to sit back and not address this fundamental attack on rights also undermines his position. (Also there must be a complete removal of any threats to remove staff travel in the future “at their sole discretion”).
Secondly, and I think this is one issue where we are nearly there - a binding and independent ACAS arbitration of all disciplinaries connected to the dispute. I’ll say no more on this for now.
Thirdly, either BA accepting those sick during strike action were genuine and redressing deduction from wages issues or accepting the matter be allowed to progress to the courts.
The removal of threats if a new negotiated facilities agreement cannot be reached within 8 weeks."

[Chesh01]

Id rather a vcc than a xxxx

Will the mixed fleet haters do one!

The facts are they look better, work harder and are more willing to serve our customers who are the most important element for BA. Good luck and welcome to our Mixed fleet brothers and sisters

Its time for us legacy crew to respond in the right way. Correct uniform standards and putting the customer first in everything we do.

Mixed fleet is here to stay and I for one will not be out performed by any of them. Punctuality, sickness, duty free commission and looking the part. Lets justify our existence in a positive way and "stop da bitchin."

Game on!

[CaptainBarbosa]

Chesh01
Amen, Brother.
In my opinion, that is the way to protect pay and conditions in these accountant driven days. Make the company think that you are value for money ... by providing more value for money. Striking and moaning, disrupting and sticking to the letter of agreements rather than applying a bit of common sense and a touch of empathy for our pasengers will only make a work group look expensive.
Displaying a sense of entitlement is probably a fairly rapid way of losing that entitlement. I hope my pilot collegues realise this too as I think the company will be asking all employees to take on more responsibilities and more accountabilities, both inside and outside the sphere of our "day job." Those departments who are willing will be seen as valuable (and, I believe, will get more satisfaction and enjoyment, out of work life.) The others, I imagine, will be fighting a rearguard action all the way to a sidelined existance firmly in BA's "costbase."
Regards
Barbosa.
(All my own opinions and not those of my employer.)

[Yellow Pen]

Originally Posted by gingerminge

Honestly yellow pen what a daft thing to ask.

The next point you will be making is people should be paying BA for the honour of wearing the BA uniform

Au contraire! If people are more interested in working for BA than the package it means BA have access to a vast pool of applicants from which they can select the best candidates. That leads to a situation in which people do the job because they like it, and when they don't like it any more they leave. Contrast that to todays employment situation in IFCE in which a sizeable element are trapped in a job they dislike with an employer they despise because they at least have the sense to realise nobody will employ them on such lucrative terms elsewhere. Which example is going to lead to the greatest customer experience? Join the dots up gingerminge.

[Flap 80]

In simple terms which hopefully even the most entranched die hard union member will understand...having operated a flight this week with my crew being new fleet....without hesitation I can say that atmosphere/enthusiasm/professionalism of the whole new fleet crew was exemplary.

ALL highly experienced and motivated ex VS/BMI

A refreshing change and looking forward to BUD and the rest:

[TOM100]

Refreshing post Chesh01 - a good way to fight back and with some integrity.......if the GPM's for MF start to outperform legacy, you know what is coming and more quickly..........if they don't the reverse is probably true......

[gingerminge]

Yellow Pen you my find that although there is a vast pool of people for BA to recruit from I have just had a really interesting conversation with a friend in who works in recruitment.

1000's of people have applied for the new roles agreed. Hardly and I mean hardly are being taken on though.

Mixed fleet growth has been cut right back from the anticipated projection and they are now going to be asking for 3 years previous airline experience.

I honestly believe the legacy fleet as it is now refered to will be around for quite a while yet.

[Colonel White]

A couple of thoughts.

Regarding recruitment. Could I float the suggestion that the reason that so many applicants for MF got turned down was because the standard expected is quite high. Maybe despite the undoubted enthusiasm of a lot of candidates, they didn't quite make the grade in what BA wanted and the only way to now reduce the paper sift is to go for candidates with at least some flying experience.

This in itself should sound warning bells to those cabin crew who believe that they are hard done by and are contemplating strike action. If there are folk out there who have experience as cabin crew and who are applying to BA for MF jobs, doesn't this suggest that it is an employer's market ?

The other thought that has been bouncing around of late is the way that cabin crew refer to the people on the plane. It seems that the general approach is to refer to them as passengers. A passenger is largely a person who is carried on a vehicle, it's a passive role. BA doesn't have passengers, it has CUSTOMERS. They are the people who spend hard earned bucks on a ticket to carry them from A to B in a reasonable standard of comfort and service. It might seem a little thing, but passengers don't expect service, customers do.Without customers, BA would not exist. The way that we can differentiate ourselves from other airlines is by the standard of customer service offered. Now I'm sure that a lot of crew do refer to our clients as customers and do deliver excellent customer service, but I can't help but feel that one of things that may differentiate the MF folk is that they are thinking customer (not passenger) from the outset. It's a little thing, but it makes the world of difference.

[Hot Wings]

Gingerminge,
Sorry to nip your rumour in the bud but in December MF recruitment will be open to people with NO ie. ZERO airline experience! The previous requirement of 3 months was just to shorten the training course to get the fleet up and running.

[TorC]

Chesh01 (#1307)

Chesh01

I'm right there with you on this.

But while those of us who are engaged and professional enough can do what we can individually, the effects of it is sadly at risk of being diluted by those of our colleagues who choose not to bother. I'm thinking here of me, recently on a 767 with 6 others, none of whom, as Colonel White suggests, were "thinking Customer" but merely going through the motions (and in a couple of extreme cases, not even managing to do that).

Like me, you have probably experienced the blank stares (or worse) when you've said something pro-BA, or just something positive in general. On many occassions I've been told that I'm too keen, and that I didn't have to do this, that or the other for a customer. What the heck else could I possibly do, stuck on a Boeing for X hours? Oh yes, silly of me .... I should be reading the Daily Mail I suppose. It's even worse on the occasions that these sort of comments come from the SCCM, the very one who's there to set the standard, and manage it!

Going through the terminals, I'll willingly stop to offer assistance. But of course, then I'm told to hurry-up as I'm delaying the crew in their mad dash to the car park. A lot seem to forget that they are wearing the BA uniform and are therefore still representing the company, even after having left the aircraft. I've worked with many who seem to think the job is over and done with at the "Doors to manual" call.

So, what to do? Yes, certainly individually we can raise our games, but will have to be prepared to take the flak for doing so. Quite ridiculous, and so very wearing, to be constantly submersed in such a negative environment.

To my mind, for far too long now, the wheat and chaff have been mixed together. Can we look to BA to help us seperate them I wonder?

(I'll quickly just add that while much of the ethos of MF appealed to me, the LH flying and people management (as I'd have gone for CSM) aspect didn't).

[Pornpants1]

gingerminge

I honestly believe the legacy fleet as it is now refered to will be around for quite a while yet.

I agree, and so do most posters on this forum, its only BASSA and their diehard supporters that would have you believe in 2 years time that all "legacy crew" will be given notice and re-employed on 11,000 pa

[Colonel White]

TorC

I suspect that the winnowing of older contract crew will occur when BA start instituting performance management across the board. It is worth noting that large parts of the airline have been operating this for some time and it is one of the features of MF. It can only be a matter of time before it is rolled out across all of IFCE. I'm sure there will be those who will wish to resist it. They'll probably be the ones with most to lose. Anyone who is at the very least pulling their weight has nothing to fear from it. The backsliders and teflon shouldered ones (and they occur in all organisations) will need to shape up or ship out.

[ottergirl]

Colonel White

Just a couple of points you have raised are ill-informed.

Cabin Crew are, and have always been, performanced managed to roughly the same standards (uniform excepting) as the new Mixed Fleet. Attendance, sickness and performance are all managed in the same way as the rest of the company. The on-board performance is assessed by the SCCM every 120 days and, while I accept that the standard of the assessment varies from person to person, I suspect that the same will apply to MF. It seems that you have been misinformed on our Performance Management process.

With regard to the distinction between customers and passengers. In Customer Service training they are of course given the sobriquet of 'customer' as you prefer but in SEP, and all things safety related, they are referred to by the JAA, the CAA, the pilots, the new Cabin crew and ourselves as passengers. The result is that the two names are interchangeable. Historically, they were all passengers until the mid 90's so anyone who pre-dates that time will lapse into that automatically.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you call them it's the way you treat them that will keep them coming back.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Union.

Traysurfer....hi there. Apologies if you have mentioned this on previous posts but I just saw a post by you a few pages back that you left BASSA.

Did you join Amicas or are you not part of any union now? Was just curious as I have spoken to someone else who did the same some months ago. Cheers.

[Hubert Davenport]

Latest from BASSA forum

Copied With permission from BASSA forum...

It is clear that Willie Walsh and the Board members of BA who appointed him, are out of control. They represent the worst excesses of Capitalism not seen since the banking disaster. Where the banks got involved in a crooked exploitation of the financial system, BA has sought to profit through rigging fuel surcharges and cargo pricing. In both cases, British Airways has been heavily fined on either sides of the Atlantic, and as far away as Australia. Yet apart from one fall-guy, a hapless BA senior manager by the name of Keith Packer, who was jailed in the USA for 8 months over cargo price fixing, no other senior members of British Airways have taken responsibility for their illegal actions and activity. There is absolutely no doubt that the Board of British Airways and the Leadership Team, have made some disastrous decisions and the company has suffered through fines and huge losses, plus over £1bn lost in inappropriate fuel hedging positions. The negative publicity for British Airways and the damage sustained to the brand and the companies image, is unimaginable

A "dictatorship in a democracy", why? Because Willie Walsh has been recruited by the Board of British Airways, not because of his business acumen or previous success as a CEO, he was hired because he is willing and able to say and do absurd things.

He started in this vein as a union rep for IALPA, where he was quoted as saying: "in negotiations, you get nowhere by being reasonable". He has tried to orchestrate a'coup d'etat' on the unions in BA and BASSA in particular, using the recent recession as an excuse to drive down wages and conditions of ordinary employees in the airline, whilst his own pay and that of his co-directors soars.

Willie Walsh represents as the CEO of British Airways, greed, exploitation and failure. He failed at Aer Lingus in his attempt to organise a Management Buy Out, he failed the airline by putting it in the low cost model and he failed to leave Aer Lingus in a viable state. He has also failed at British Airways. Industrial relations are the worst in the companies history, the share price is depressed because of his actions, and rather than riding high out of the recession, there is a sense of doom amongst employees at the airline. You hear it from the engineers who haven't got the spares or manpower to fix the planes, you hear it from the ground staff who struggle to deal with the volumes of customers as their own numbers are reduced and you hear it from the cabin crew.

It appears that the Board and LT of British Airways have great instincts for personal profit, but have no values or concern for the majority of staff that generate those profits, and who now work harder for the same money, or less in some cases. Where are the profit sharing schemes for ordinary employees in BA? When was the last Share Save scheme?

BA's cabin crew are being victimised solely for the profit motive. And we tacitly accept this "dictatorship" every time we turn up for work. What is worse, is that we have seen in our own dispute Capitalism trumping democracy. Democratic ballots for industrial action, have been overturned by the friends of Capitalism in the High Court. Judges who are supposed to use common sense and intellect in their deliberations, have cast aside legitimate and lawful democratic ballots because of flimsy technicalities. That is where we are as a democracy in the United Kingdom and it stinks. Unscrupulous employers use this avenue to fight a dispute that they have deliberately created though imposition, using High Court judges to bust unions.

And in this warped void of a capititalistic society that people like Willie Walsh congregate, it is perfectly acceptable to make people poor. Witness the Mid Fleet. No agreement there to work to, only a "framework". No decent wages or conditions, just exploitation of unemployed people or others, who thought that BA is an honourable employer and things 'will get better'. But the fact is that MF should be a glaring example of what life would be like in BA, without union representation. For all those crew who went to work during the dispute, this ultimately will be your reward.

Our dispute with Willie Walsh has now evolved. This is not about imposition and the false premise for that reduction in crew complements that BA was in a "fight for survival", this dispute is now a revolt against management greed, incompetence, bullying and harassment. It is a defining moment.

Are you prepared as decent people to allow this dictatorship in a democracy to continue? Is it right that you are coerced and bullied into accepting inferior pay and conditions, AFTER the company has turned the corner and is once again, as predicted, making substantial profits? Is it right that your democratically elected union representatives and your union, are trampled over by the mantra, ego and dogmatism of one person? Is it right that colleagues have been suspended and sacked just for supporting the dispute?

Then it is your duty to vote NO at the next ballot.




Thoughts and opinions welcome.