This dispute should never have been about what Unite WANT.

It should never have been about what BASSA rep CSDs WANT.

But that's what it's about.

Instead of being about what the company and its employees both NEED.

Shame on both parties mentioned above for screwing the company and your members!

Actually the dispute is about what those who vote want.....
Two things wrong with fighting your IR battles in the press....Forums like this that spawn lower deck lawyers with all sorts of clap trap and a harder road to reach a resolution.
As I understand it the next ballot is only a consultative ballot that has no legal bindings whatsoever.

call 100,
if you have a problem with the veracity of my posts, do please let me know.
If it is not my posts that are causing you a problem, let the other posters know.
ta
AO

Self-fulfilling prophecy, that one?

:}

BTW call100,

This dispute started because BASSA rep CSDs resented being asked to do a little work.

It's still going (if you can call it that) because they continue to foment unrest among their members to serve their own agenda, by way of a litany of lies and half truths.

It's failing because most of those voting had no idea that their union were going to make such an issue out of something so minor (so minor that they had already agreed that Gatwick could do it), and were wrongly advised that the company would cave at the first sign of IA (much as they were wrongly advised to ignore BA's statements regarding ST, as "it would be returned very quickly").

I think that the next strike ballot will be a dismal failure, as many people realise that what the union deadheads are squealing about is not worth fighting for; plus, on the big points, they don't appear to have a clue what they are on about, or are simply lying to their members.

But I think it's reached the point where it doesn't matter to BA any more. They have probably achieved far more than they had ever hoped for, thanks to BASSA's amateurish actions and UNITE's 70's-style comedy trade unionism. "Brothers! Comrades! All out!", etc.

:}

Incredulous!
 

I am a new contributor to this forum but have watched the BA strike and the PPrune forums relating to it with interest and a mounting sense of incredulity. At the beginning I was bemused by the over-reaction to the company's decision to remove one staff member at a time of major cutbacks and world recession. Were they not just managing in difficult times as best as they could? I thought they did rather well as no-one seemed to lose their job unless they wanted to and no-one seemed to have a pay cut (although it now seems that other branches of the airline HAVE taken pay cuts)

I then felt slightly sorry for the cabin crew who seemed to me to being completely mislead by some very selfish union reps who I could only surmise had their own agenda. I have since learned from these forums that a lot of the reps are apparently the ones who were affected by these changes so a BIT of self interest there perhaps?

I lost a lot of sympathy when I saw the ridiculous displays from Bedfont where you have supposedly underpaid workers with flashy cars drinking Pimms with their children being provided for with bouncy castles and the like as if they were on a day out in the sunshine rather than striking for a genuine cause. I also thought it irresponsible for these parents to be parading their children in this way. With the sheer amount of obviously unsympathetic responses from the rest of the company, the media and the general public, I am staggered that this strike has ANY cabin crew at all who still support it. Yet reading some of the posts on the cabin crew forum from AVA Hannah (and her predecessors who seem to have taken a back seat now) I am dumbfounded!! AVA Hannah apparently lives in S Africa and commutes to Heathrow!! I thought it was bad that Liz Maloney lived in US but this is getting silly!! No wonder BA are in trouble!! How can these staff afford to do this? This is a job that you would expect to find being done by unskilled manual workers. It requires a few WEEKS of training!! Even with subsidised travel I would not expect to see even qualified professionals like nurses, teachers and social workers (who complete a 3 YEAR training) commute from so far afield. The cabin crew earn FAR too much if they can afford to do this. And now AVA Hannah thinks it is a disgrace because she has had to buy a ticket for £500 because she has lost the subsidised travel that enabled her to get to her (quite obviously overpaid) job having been warned in advance that this is what would happen. I really do not understand what calibre of staff BA have if they cannot work out that it was perhaps a bit foolish to go on strike in these circumstances.

So are these people brainwashed? Is this the sort of mentality that allows cults to thrive? I reckon a psychologist would have a field day!! It's all a bit much for me to work out. I can't decide if these crew need medical help, an education or a kick up the backside!!

What IS really going on here? I read somewhere that a lot of the strikers are Hobby Jobbers (lovely term!) and that they have great part-time contracts that mean that they hardly go to work at all anyway and other incomes so are not dependent on their incomes from BA. If this is the case, this continuing dispute is just plainly immoral because there are thousands of BA staff who are working hard to try to make up for the actions of these few. They DO have families who are dependent on their salaries from BA (unlike those parading their children at Bedfont) and will really suffer if BA go under.

So all in all I have decided that it is this latter category that I need to support and so will continue to fly BA just so the likes of AVA Hannah do not succeed in jeopardising the futures of the rest of the company. So this is one passenger (not keen on the SLF terminology by the way. I think it is disrespectful!) who is still, despite the best efforts of the few, Backing BA!!

I see the commuting striker on the other thread remains unhappy. Not surprising seeing she is facing a £500 ticket cost every time she reports for duty.

I do hope Duncan Holley & Co realise just how much they have let down their members over their unjustified initial promise that ST would be returned "in about 5 minutes" and then making it worse by recommending rejection of a deal that returned ST to commuters.

If I had been a commuting striker, I would be considering legal action against the BASSA leadership.

I think it's an interesting assumption that Ava Hannah is a real person rather than a Bedfont Keyboard Warrior.

I don't wish to get into attempts to personally identify posters, but on the other thread, one BASSA militant departs, and lo and behold a newly registered BASSA militant appears with the time to compose long, yet illogical, responses to what are generally reasonable questions.

If there really is a member of LHR CC who commutes from JNB, and who relies on ST to commute, and who went on strike anyway in the belief that BA couldn't or wouldn't follow through with their threat, then I have zero sympathy for their plight - or in fact, in an acronym littered posting, my sympathy level is at is SFA.

Mocamps
 

As I understand it, this is not about reducing the aircraft team of CC by one person - its about doing it without the agreement of BASSA. It could easily have been about 'imposing' something else which was not agreed by BASSA? - however this particular imposition does appear to have hit a nerve with the BASSA leadership :}

bizdev

Thank you Bizdev.
Does that mean that the management have tp get the approval of the union before making ANY small changes? Oh dear!

I have now seen that Ava Hannah is complaining that her commute from S Africa is difficult!! I was just going to get drawn in by wondering whose choice that is to commute and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I am the one who is being naive here as i don't usually contribute to these sorts of forums.

Could Ava Hannah REALLY be a sympathiser of BA who is trying to wind people up by appearing to take an obviously ridiculous stand of expecting the company to make it easy for her to commute from S Africa? I mean, surely cabin crew do not REALLY commute from that distance,do they? On a cabin crew wage? I think maybe that was the reaction the person wanted and that maybe this is a bit of game-playing on the forum and I have fallen for it! After all, the only cause Ava Hannah is helping is the BA non-strikers as her posts seem absolutely outrageous to a bystander like me.

Moderators, are any steps taken to ensure that people are genuinely what they say they are?

I think I should probably revert to my previous position of watching with incredulity from the sidelines in case I start to look silly!!

The nub of the matter; it is about crews having a CSM on board that has to work. In all the threads, on all the pprune forums, there is no one that has declared a case for CSM's not doing cabin service duties (with any reasonable argument)... Speaks volumes?

Bassa's gripe? we didn't suggest/agree it; BA imposed it.

Of course this has then led into, we strike because we have lost a,b,c and probably d (New/mixed/start again Ba fleet) when it is introduced.

CC commuting "rest"
 

CC commuting "rest"

As the BA CC continuously claim their importance in areas outside the drinks, meals and duty free service, (and there are many examples of this importance), I do hope that each and every BA CC member is keeping a detailed personal record that their rest period, following their commute, is a reasonable length of time.
Guessing that the duties outside the service area require the same alertness as, say,driving a car, BA CC might like to know that large multi-nationals now ban staff from driving for 48 hours after taking a long-haul flight.
Their lawyers have told them that is reasonable rest.

I suspect that the nice people from the Belgrano will be looking in to this shortly...........................as many of them are, I suspect, avid readers of pprune.

;)

Some of us have been around a while so our credibility can be vouched for (to a certain degree). Others who have made only a dozen or so posts, perhaps less so.

Crew - both flight and cabin crew - are commuting from all over the world.

Most of them do - however - live in Europe and generally in Spain, Italy, France and Switzerland.

I do know of crew who commute from South Africa, Hong Kong, Angola, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and all the way from Australia.

Ava
 

On the other forum you infer that WW should have resigned after 'the fiasco' of T5. It may well have been just that but I think you over-egg his role in it for your own ends. As a Joe Public, it looked to me that there was a lot wrong with procedures and systems outwith his control. I am sure that there might have been things that the airline could have managed better in the lead in phase but to credit him with the blame for the fiasco, is wide of the mark IMHO.

If Joe Public can make a reasoned evaluation of what the scenario was, looking in from the outside, I think you should be even better positioned to do so and that you simply wish to take any opportunity to criticise the man who currently is trying to ensure future viability of BA but in doing so, impacts on your own lifestyle choices.

Ted

I don't think I questioned the veracity of anyone's posts and no one's post is causing me a problem.
I merely pointed out the disadvantages of fighting a dispute in the public eye. If the cap fits wear it.....

On the subject of staff travel some interesting points rear their heads from time to time.

From what I have been told, on a recent internal BA forum with the head of IFCS, the question of the return of ST was raised.

He pointed out that BA had written to Unite with the following suggestion: -

When the dispute is settled ST would be returned to all with a revised seniority date

ST for those that leave BA at any point in the future would be in accordance with the booklet, with the start date for ST being the date of joining BA

ST would be returned with existing seniority on one fixed route for commuters

This offer is still on the table and is dependent on there being no further strikes over this issue.

There is no evidence that Unite have informed their members of this offer!!

Could anyone currently a member of BASSA enlighten us as to when the next council election is? Or have the current splendid leadership managed to secure an indefinite extension of their powers?
Interestingly, no one has yet denied the scurrilous rumour that most of them have been off sick while the rank and file lose their staff travel. It would be useful to know whether we were misinformed.

SB

Lots of posts today from the duty BASSA poster, currently Ava. Her views on most things seem to be sadly misguided.

and when accused of having no experience of the real world responded:

If Ava thinks the current outside world is the same as a seasonal job undertaken at least 17 years ago she's in for a big surprise...

It also seems that a lot of the strikers are unhappy finding they have not been paid whilst on strike. With some actually getting a minus figure on their wage slips.

I am sure they were comforted by the 4 figure sum one of their collegues complained about getting, despite claiming to be on strike.

I'm not understanding the logic of "Ava" on the CC board.

On one hand she's mad about having BA's salaries compared to others yet she keeps speaking of Mr. Walsh's salary in comparision to President Obama's.

There is a large section of the population in the U.S. that makes more than the President, as there is a large portion of individuals in the U.K. that make more than the Prime Minister....and its still not relevant to BASSA's disagreement with BA.

Amazing that all of this rhetoric, all these destructive side issues, came out of a simple staffing decision that operates smoothly out of Gatwick.

Ava's logic is that, as she has lost so much by striking, she must continue to do so.

There is a concept in accounting known as "Sunk Costs", and it's about the realisation that you can't let emotion take over and pursue something to the bitter end, just because you have already spent a lot of money.

An example would be that you have spent £10,000 fighting a strike. You are offered £5,000 to stop, but you refuse because you have already spent £10,000 and the £5,000 won't cover what you have lost.

It's the wrong choice. The original outlay of £10,000 is blinding you to the clear fact that if you take the £5,000 you will be better off than you were earlier today, and that it's the best way to mitigate your position, even if you won't be better off than when you started.

The £10,000 is a Sunk Cost. It should be irrelevant to your choice now.

In short - consider everything on its own merits and ignore the past. You should only continue to strike if you think that there is a better offer coming - but don't forget that a better offer of £6,000 is really no better if it costs you a further £1,000 to achieve it.

BASSA don't recognise Sunk Costs, and soon the only thing sunk will be them :O

Good post Julia.

If Ava's posts are to believed, she's now having to pay £500 per commute. Assuming 2 commutes per month, that would make her £12K taxed income pa worse off than if she had accepted the BA deal. Perhaps equivalent to say 15K off her gross salary before tax. (I've no idea what the SA tax rate is)

I wonder what she would have said a year ago if BASSA had explained to her she had a choice of either a £15K pay cut or to agree that the CSD's should push a trolley?

CSD's should push a trolley
 

ah, but wasn't the original official reason 'imposition' ? Don't hear much about it now. Such a silly union.

If I wanted BASSAmentalists to come up with one of the most hilarious and inappropriate descriptions of themselves, I could not have thought of one better than AH's on the other thread, viz:

But then I realised it wasn't an attempted joke. It is indeed true. Willie Walsh inherited them.

:}

What an unfortunate malapropism.

Life in the real world
 

Continuing the theme from the other thread about people not knowing what is happening in the real world: two reports out today that should demonstrate the pressures employers are under:

BBC News - Forecast suggests 600,000 public sector jobs to go

BBC News - Dismissal warning to 7,000 Neath Port Talbot staff

This country has been in Boom since 1992 (or so) and now it is time for the bust. Anyone who thinks that we are starting to lift out of recession has been listening to politicians. We might be 'bumping along the bottom' of the slump but my guess is that there is a lot more pain to come.

Unison appears to be stuck in 'boom' mode and, further, they have no option on their control panel for 'Accept some redundancies and try to negotiate the best interest of your members'.

Having had the big boom of mgmt dominating all and now the big boom of unions dominating all, perhaps (just perhaps) we might find in a few years time that we reach a state of balance? Nah. :*

"They don't want any of us 'Heritage' crew."
 

"They don't want any of us 'Heritage' crew. "

If by "Heritage", the Champagne Charlies' current nominated poster over on the other thread, means "striker", then it is NOT WW and/or BA that do not want strikers.................it is us, the fare and salary paying customers that do not want "Heritage" crew.
We want JSL, Tira, and HiF., not the baasa'd champagne charlies.

Interesting post...
 

I agree. As a gold card holder for many years, I am fed up with the "Heritage" crews, their bleating and rude behaviour and giving the impression that they are doing me a favour when I fly. I would like the opportunity to know where and when New Fleet will be operating so I can choose not only the flight I want to take but also the crew. It is time for change..

And that is exactly what pax/shareholders/the BA Board both want and need yet BASSA seem unable to grasp/accept

Is this really right?
 

Having followed all of this I really don't understand what it is all about.

Firstly BA and the unions started to negotiate, but the Unions were not willing to sit in the same room as each other at ACAS (as documented in the court case). The court case also highlighted the Unions cost savings were not as large as initially claimed.

BA fed up with this imposed a change in staffing levels and work requirements, to meet financial targets.

The Unions decided that this was illegal/wrong (your choice), but it was shown in court that this was legal, and in line with the agreed contracts. The Judge, despite basically throwing the Unions case out of court as baseless, even pointed the Unions in the direction of what needed changing if they want things like this covered by the various contracts.

The Unions then decided to strike over imposition. An imposition of terms they were willing to accept? :ugh: Why not enter negotiations and say you are willing to accept the changes, provided the relevant contracts are changed to require agreement in the future? In other words use the acceptance as a goodwill bargaining tool?

Then they strike. The offers get worse. They still strike. They are told they will lose Staff Travel if they do, and are surprised when they lose Staff Travel?

Then an offer which is pretty similar to the original offer is on the table (except now with New Fleet), and they will accept it, but want Staff Travel back.

Member of senior BA management on a online forum (taken from thread on here) says that if they accept the deal, then BA will restore Staff Travel without Seniority, except on 1 route, where they will restore it with Seniority (to appease commuters). But some CC don't understand this/trust this/or something.

But in essence the CC are in a worse position than before the strike, with a similar offer on the table, a New Fleet being introduced, and pax avoiding BA now. This forces the company to have to make MORE savings, so putting more pressure on ALL areas (CC included) to cut MORE costs, and to speed up the introduction of New Fleet.

And CC wonder why the public isn't on side - they went on strike over the legal imposition of conditions they were willing to accept!!!!!! :ugh::ugh::ugh:

Personally I hope the moderate members accept the offered contract, and then BA uses SOSR on all those on the original contracts.

Meanwhile BASSA supporter in Chief Ava Hannah point out that most CC's don't understand the "real" issues at stake

Q to Ava:
Answer from Ava:Q. to Ava:
A. from Ava:
So, to summarise her views, the rest of the CC don't know what this IA is about and should strike and lose ST. But if she was given back ST she would vote to accept the deal she feels the others should reject if they knew what it was really about.

I have to say that the double standards shown by BASSA are quite breathtaking. They expect the remaining staff to strike and lose their ST while at the same time saying they will accept the current offer if ST is returned to them. Incredible!

PS Excellent summary Swissref :D

Non Doms
 

There's been alot of talk about commuters and non doms, so I thought I'd clarify the tax position of commuters.

Your domilicility is not determined by where you live - it's alot more complex than that. Generally you are domiciled where your father is born and this is incredibly difficult to change. Just because you move abroad doesn't change your domicility, just your residency status.

If you are domiciled in the UK you cannot avoid paying tax on ANY UK earnings, irrespective of where you live. Now, I would imagine, as working for BA would mean your place of work is the UK, that, unless father born outside UK so therefore classed as non dom, the commuters have to pay UK income tax.

The only way around this, if you are UK domiciled, is if your place of work, hence your earnings, are outside the UK and you spend less than 90 days in UK in a tax year. Then you are "normally" not liable for UK income tax on such earnings ("normally" means you have to have a formal contract showing your place of work is outside UK and you have filed a P85 with HMRC and they have accepted your non resident status)

Therefore, I would summize the majority of commuters do not enjoy tax free salaries and will be hit hard by the removal of ST and having to buy their own full price tickets.

harrypic
 

Unfortunately you are wrong in your assumptions. They are not Non Doms. I believe they are considered as not ordinarily resident.
They pay tax in the UK on earnings whilst in the UK. As they spend a lot of time overseas for work these earnings are not taxed in the UK.
As long as their country of residence has a reciprocal agreement with the UK then a good proportion of their salary can be tax free,
I believe it is an old maritime arrangement. Again I believe the UK revenue has tried to repeal the rules but it is rumoured they have been thwarted by MEPs who use the same rules.

In short there can be a tax advantage in commuting from overseas.
That's why so many cabin crew work part time from overseas as the take home pay can be the same as full time and living in the UK.

Please allow me to completely and utterly destroy any ideas that anyone may have about clarity when it comes to domicile, ordinary residence, residence and taxation as far as HMRC are concerned.

Interesting reading on these subjects of considerable complexity may be found here below. Please note that much of tax law in Britain is not based upon statute law and therefore is entirely open to interpetation and whim. This is one of the conundrums facing the new government, the stabilising of an inherently disjointed and unpredicatable tax structure.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/hmrc6.pdf

Since the inception of the application of self assessment, HMRC will not rule on residency. HMRC may inform a tax payer who is not resident in the UK, that he no longer is required to complete a UK tax return, but this is not the same as the previous system under which a letter would be send to the tax payer by HMRC confirming his non residence.
Any doubts as to the sensibleness of this policy from the point of view of HMRC will be rapidly dispelled by a reading of the recent appeal court case of Gaines-Coooper v HMRC, a case which Gaines Cooper lost.
It is interesting to those who have studied the above case to note that Gaines-Cooper had apparently not applied to HMRC for a change of domicile of origin. At the moment however, HMRC seems quite content to allow questions of domicile to remain unanswered, presumably awaiting some form of statutory guidance from the present government as to both domicile and a residence test. Up until very recently however, a change of domicile of origin was a matter which had to be agreed between tax payer and HMRC.

In the case of South Africa, the tests of ordinary residence and residence apply, much as they do in the UK. Cohen v CIR and Kuttel v CIR will provide further information on the interpetation of ordinary residence for those who are seriously interested.

The internal revenue systems of both the United Kingdom and South Africa take various forms of expenses and deductions in to account when it comes to the calculation of individual income tax returns. These would be matters which would have to be declared to and agreed with the internal revenues of the countrys concerned. The compliance divisions of both country's internal revenue departments are in close communication and are, to the best of their abilities, quite efficient.

Each case of domicile, ordinary residence and residence is taken on an individual basis and circumstances which might hold for one determination in one case will not necessarily achieve the same result in another. In the event of any doubt at all on the part of a sensible tax payer, a professional adviser should be consulted. The concept of a statute of limitations in Britain and South Africa is not well developed. This helps to explain why Mr Gaines-Cooper may find himself liable for taxes ranging back over a period of some twenty five years, totalling £30 million, even though no fraud was alleged or commited. If cabin or flight crew have been mismanaging their tax affairs or declaring incorrectly on their self assessment returns then retribution might attend their efforts with, at the least, penalties and interest. It must be that the attention of HMRC has been drawn to the salary and benefit structure of the emolluments of cabin crew, and, by extension, flight crew. I would expect there to have been a compliance section established at HMRC to deal with this.
All however is not entirely gloom. In the case of this BA pilot, he won his suit.

http://www.tax.org.uk/attach.pl/6697...35_TA_0408.pdf

However, it is worth noting that the results of this case will almost certainly have found their way, through the usual compliance channels, to the desk of another, more southerly situated, internal revenue service.

Please take note that the function of a reciprocal tax treaty is not to allow a person to avoid tax or to enable him to pay less tax. The purpose is to ensure at least that the tax payer is not taxed twice over. The tax treaty between the US (where tax is generally lower than the UK) and the UK provides that tax on dividends but not income is witheld at 15% concession in the United States, provided and only provided, that any income afforded such a benefit will then be imported in to the UK and declared to HMRC for taxation in the UK. At that point, the tax already paid in the US may be taken into account in the calculation of actual UK tax liability.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

As you say to outsiders this has no logic. But I suspect some in BASSA see picking a fight with WW as unfinished business from the 2007 strike that was called off at the last minute after WW did a deal with Tony Woodley. There was a lot of anger at this in the BASSA camp and I suspect that some have been spoiling for a fight ever since.

Also, Mixed Fleet heralds the beginning of the end for BASSA (if it hasn't happened already). Mixed Fleet will have no seniority and fewer supervisory positions. So, it is likely to have a much higher level of staff turnover and staff are likely to feel less need to join a union if they don't expect to be in the job for more than a few years. Add to the that the fact that a separate body of crew at LHR forming a separate bargaining unit means that BASSA's negotiating strength is going to weaken considerably.

When Mixed Fleet starts, I await with interest to see how BASSA responds, ie whether BASSA try to undermine Mixed Fleet crew and leave them out in the cold or bring them onside and try and stir them up.

77
 

77,

Perhaps my post was unclear - my point was exactly that, they are not non doms.

They may be considered non resident, but even if you are non resident (or considered ordinary non resident) any UK earnings are still taxable. As their place of work is UK, then that is classed as UK earnings, irrespective of how long they are out of the country for.

The non ordinary resident status only allows your foreign earnings not to be taxed by HMRC.

For example - I am non ordinary resident in Dubai, my earnings, earnt in Dubai from a Dubai company are not taxed - But I rent my house in the UK and as that is earnings in the UK it is taxed.

Therefore, as the commuters place of work is UK, its UK income and they should pay tax on it.

Cavorting
 

Cavorting,

My post was merely to correct the misunderstanding that many of the commuters have tax free salaries, not to clarify HMRC position on domicility and non resident status. You are correct though, HMRC will not confirm any status in case they can come back at you at a later date - its a very grey area, which in a nutshell I beleive was what you were trying to say....

Why say in a thousand words what you can summarize in 20?

Against my better judgement
 

Despite saying in my last post that I am now going to revert to sitting on the sidelines, I find myself being drawn into Ava Hannah's latest offerings on the Cabin Crew thread!!

However, I can't make up my mind about whether she is REALLY STUPID or just trying to wind us all up!! If it is the latter she has succeeded and may or may not have achieved her aim depending on who she really represents!!

It would now appear that Ava is not dependent on her income from BA and is indeed a 'hobby jobber'!! She has a farm in South Africa - and maybe this is really how the other half (being BA cabin crew!) live!! She is NOT dependent on her income from BA and so can afford to play with the lives of those who are.

This is life in the real world outside of BA -

This week I have witnessed first-hand the anxiety faced by people who have been told that their jobs are 'at risk'. These are people who are not earning half what the average BA cabin crew member is earning and are probably working a lot harder. They were talking about not being able to afford to go on holidays that they had already booked in Cornwall, never mind whether they can afford to pay £500 to commute from S Africa. They were worried about how to pay for the necessities in life - food, school uniforms etc

Whatever the games people are playing on these forums, I would really like you to appreciate that in the real world outside of airlines people are hurting in this present climate. The ones that DO splash out and pay for BA flights to go on holiday would really appreciate it if you would just this once try and stop thinking about yourselves and start to think about those who REALLY pay your wages - the passengers!! Without us, you are nothing!! It won't matter whether you are Backing BA or, (as I see it as an outsider), are believing everything your well paid self-interested union reps are feeding you and choose to deprive people of their hard-earned holidays! If we can no longer afford to take a gamble on BA (and that is what it is at present!) you will all be getting a taster of the real world, whatever branch of BA you work in.

So wake up!! Smell the roses (seems to me you have plenty to smell in BA - how many other jobs have the part-time opportunities you appear to enjoy? Opportunities that allow you to even contemplate commuting from South Africa!!) and start to appreciate what you have before you join the rest of us in the real world.

Regarding some posts in the other forum from a striker. I'm of the opinion that the poster is just trying to wind people up.
For a person who has managed to create a fantastic lifestyle cannot be stupid, yet the poster shows clear indications to the opposite in their writings.

I was amused to hear about striking CC wearing their ID's inside out as some sort of playground secret society recognition, I mean come on, are these people suposed to be mature professional adults?
I would like to know, purely for curiosity which CC on a flight I was on were strikers, so any form or recognition would be welcome. The only problem is that if any move was made to distinguish this group apart there would be hell to pay with yells of victimisation.