I fully agree with you Juan - this isn't just a case of BA versus Unite. It has huge implications for all UK employers who employ local employees, based locally on local terms and conditions.

I don't understand the logic of Betty in this instance who seems to be suggesting that these cabin crew are different from other employees becuase they work on UK registered aircraft. It seems a totally artificial boundary. I work for a French company and spend my work time split between France and the UK. Does that mean I could be entitled to French T &C which include better pension provision and higher holiday entitlement?

Call 100 - it isn't a case of Union bashing. It just doesn't make sense that you can be based in one country and claim T & C from the country that the company you work for is registered in.

Look, it just is not the same. You are all comparing apples with pears. As Call 100 said it is the same as the shipping companies, they cannot employ low cost foreign workers alongside UK worker on a UK registered ship.

If there is a flaw in all of this, it is the law at fault not Unite. I am not a fan of Unite at the moment but blaming them for a court decision is just crazy. If you are unhappy with the legislation and the Judges verdicts you should be lobbying your MP about it not blaming a union looking after it's members.

It is blatant discrimination to make these crew retire at 45 and their is no reason for it other than because they can get away with it. Just like it happened in the 70's when female crew had to retire from BA at 35 or if they got married. In this day and age I am totally shocked that any of you can think this kind of practice is good or OK.

BA could have avoided all of this if they had amended the contracts of these International crew and allowed them to retire at a normal retirement age. So maybe you should be blaming BA if this court case has ramifications for other companies and not Unite, who are merely representing their members in this over an injustice.

It isn't quite the same with shipping as ships come under maritime law, not aviation but I do now understand your logic so thanks for explaining it so well and apologies for missing it in earlier posts.

"A ship operates under the laws of its flag state, and these laws are used if the ship is involved in an admiralty case."

.. is this the case with aircraft? Genuine question as I don't know. Maritime law won't apply to aircraft but are there similar \ identical regulations in the aviation industry? That might well be the crux of the case.

I disagree that this is union bashing, the union is doing it's job quite correctly in representing it's members. Some of the best work that Arthur Scargill did was as the Welfare Officer of the NUM, does that mean that he served the miners well by taking them out on strike in the 80's? You can admire the work he did looking after miner's welfare but see that he also helped to destroy their longer term welfare by destroying their jobs.

Whatever the result of the court case today the repercussions will be played out in the industrial relations of the time of the ruling not the ones extant at the time of the original case.

The issue is which country's law has supremacy. If the Chinese government were to make a law that insisted that cabin crew had to retire at 45 would that apply to UK cabin crew? This issue cannot been seen in isolation and while it does not relate directly to the current dispute it is inevitably going to be affected by the current dispute.

The irony is that UNITE may well win this case to the detriment of many UK workers and indeed to their own members at BA. If the HK base becomes too expensive as a result of this case it will be shut and those crew members will be replaced by MF, who at present have no representation by UNITE within BA. So they win the battle and lose the war.

Thinking further on the Ms Mak case, if at the time that her contract was put into place, Hong Kong was still a crown colony, then very likely UK law would have applied to HK legal matters, and would be the governing law for the contract. With regard to the term of retirement at 45, this could well have been a normal period of employment in HK for that particular activity at the time of contract - in any case this ruling would then only have an effect limited to similar employment contracts commencing prior to the Chinese takeover.

With regard to "union bashing"; in the present political climate of the unions rising up en masse against the government and calling for multiple industrial action, and the current state of the union/branches involved in the BA dispute who seem to be following this lead, I find it very hard, if not impossible to find any trace of any element involved who appear to be actively looking after their members interests, other than trying to claim that all those dismissed were playing harmless jokes and nobody should suffer any loss for going on strike.

However the Bassa members subs still appear to be losing 5% on the way through the branch, nobody appears to have any accounts or published rules & regulations and of course a ballot of the membership would seem to be the last resort for deciding to do anything in either branch or union.

And This is a democratic union setup, run by the members and for the benefit of the members ??? - and no disparaging word should be said ?:ugh:

can i suggest that we are woefully short of a full set of facts here? there are parallels between maritime and aviation law and i find it surprising that an employee on a local contract should expect its terms to be adjudicated subject to the laws of another jurisdiction. in that sense, i am on the side of those who cite the (enormous) implications if this has wider application. any multi-national firm can reasonably expect that its locally recruited and based employees would be subject to the labour laws of that territory. equally, the government of that territory has every right to be offended if a foreign court decides otherwise.

we must be missing something here; there is an element we cannot see that pursuades unite to pursue this and for a court to agree with them.

there is a contradiction also in those, on the other thread, who are advocating that this is the correct interpretation. if, as cc say, their job is so stressful- anti social hours, exposure to radiation etc-not to mention difficult passengers and bullying management- surely there is a case for a lower retirement age? rather like the armed forces, the police and the fire service.

should not unite be campaigning for a universal 45 retirement or redeployment to a less front-line role? I have recently used a european airline on several occasions, where there is clearly no early retirement for cabin crew. it is only a slight exaggeration to say, as a retiree myself, there have been times when i have been tempted to offer my seat to the cabin crew out of courtesy. i think unite are fighting the wrong battle.

So, is Ryanair correct in stating that their French workers should be on Irish contracts ?

I think it would be limited to cabin crew \ pilots - those who actually work on board UK registered aircraft. The correlation that appears to be being used is with maritime law around registration of vessels, flags of convenience and which countries laws are applicable - e.g. where the vessel is registered is key.

It does seem to a dodgy route to be taking ... how easy is it register aircraft in another country, say even within the EU, that has worse local T & Cs and then apply those local T & Cs to all cabin crew and pilots?

I doubt there are laws in HK/China that women should retire at 45, CC or otherwise. If it's only the enforced retirement that this court case is about, good luck to them.

Sadly it isn't about the "pension" or "forced retirement" - it goes far further than that. I would certainly agree that it is morally wrong for BA (any employer) to do this. But why use UK courts to fight it when the employees are based in Hong Kong, reside in Hong Kong and have no connection to the UK at all (the answer to that is in other posts above this one).

"Unite, the largest union in the country, will be arguing that the airline must apply UK law to its Hong Kong-based female cabin crew"

What I find puzzling about this is that the Hong Kong crew have never been represented by BASSA/Amicus in BA. They had/have their own union in HKG.

BASSA did sign up a number of ICC's some years ago but BA refused to acknowledge that they were represented by BASSA.

The South American based crew did belong to the TGWU going back decades to BCAL.

The Narita based crew are represented by their Japanese union and they get some pretty good deals. I guess they would not be happy if this case is won and BA put them on UK T&C's.

Bettybyboat,
That does happen, all Ryanair planes are registered in Ireland and whatever base they are based at and whatever nationality of crew that fly on them, they use Irish rules and laws.

UK Qantas crew work to Australian laws of Aviation because they work on Australian planes.

In this case, we are of course, only talking about air crew who only work on UK Aircraft and not the millions of people that work for foreign companies or UK companies in foreign countries.

I don't see how bringing BA HK based cabin crews retirement age up to that of a normal retirement age can affect all these companies as you say but I have lost the will to live over this now.

I am going to leave this debate now because to be honest some of you think you are experts on everything and I feel the Unions and the UK courts and UK legislate are actually the experts.
Vct
Where has it been said that anyone is trying to put HK crew on UK terms and condition? They just want to retire when all other crew do including other International crew. Obviously some of them are members of Unite. You can be a member of a union even if it does not have bargaining rights for you, they can still represent you.

If your only information is gleaned from the Daily Mail, Telegraph etc then that is how you would see it. However, in the real world you are all so fond of quoting, the TU's look after thousands of cases daily. They and their legal departments do far more good than harm for many ordinary members who don't give a toss about the politics.
It's easy to generalise and doesn't exactly take any intelligence. It would be easy to say that British Management are some of the worst in the world. Although true of a large minority of British Managers it would not be fair or useful to generalise and put them all in the same boat.
BASSA screwed up and the Top table compounded it......It certainly doesn't affect many Union members in other industries. In fact you will find that life just goes on and they wouldn't know or care about what is happening at BA. They have far more to worry about. ...:ugh:

You are absolutely spot on here Call100, this is where the true value of a union lies.

Updates requested
 

Bassa have been involved in two court cases this week:
HKG Stewardess and
Malone leave to appeal.

Does anybody know what happened?

Also, BA and Unite were due to meet together with ACAS on Monday. Again is there any news?

Contract is a contract
 

I may be looking at this in a simplified manner, but if 2 parties sign a contract that is within the scope of a country's law that is fine. If one signee of the contract wants to vary it then it is done through negotiation to the satisfaction of both parties?

The suggestions by some are implying, as an example, if I signed up for a 12 month contract and it ends after 12 months, why should I complain that this is not fair and then take the company to court to argue I should be on a longer contract?

Likewise the retirement issue.

Betty Girl, I see what you are arguing but at the end of the day it is a contract (a local one at that)

If there is a law in China at the time of this lady's retirement said that this was illegal then the Union should be taking it up in the chinese courts.

Many staff around the world that are employed by BA are on local contracts. Are you going to tell those in the UAE, for example, that they must take a pay cut to the UK rates and pay UK tax. I can see that going down like a lead balloon.

Do you remember a few years back a number of stewardesses (CSDs I think) took BA to court because they were forced to retire at 55. They lost the case because there was nothing in law that said people could stay on until 65 if they wished. A couple of years later the law changed to what we have now. Then, IIRC, there were complaints that the Cabin Crew could not retire at 55 on FULL pension, they would have to wait until they were 65.

Personally if I had the opportunity to retire at 55 on full pension, I would take it (and yes I know that crew paid more into the pension scheme so that they could get the full pension benefits on retirement. I would have liked to have done the same)

This appears not to be about local contracts or who signed what and when - this seems to be about whether the aviation industry has the same sort of legal obligations as the maritime industry. A UK registered vessel must abide by UK law (no matter what contracts are signed or when or where - an illegal contract is null and void). Hence the widespread use of "Flags of Convenience" and some nations even setting up Second Registrations so that you can register a vessel in your home country but still not have that vessel abiding by the home country law - e.g. Norway, Denmark and Germany. This allows for the use of cheap labour, less rigourous safety standards etc.

The big question (I think) is whether the same applies to a UK registered aircraft?

So for instance, if a HK based cabin crew employee was injured whilst working on a UK registered based plane, would any subsequent legal action take place under UK or HK based law? Or to take it a step further, do non-UK basesd employees working on UK registered aircraft have the same "protection" as UK based employees?

Betty Girl has given a good explanation of why the courts might find against BA.

I fear that you are right, as there are so many HR laws/regulations these days that sometimes it is difficult to even have a high level of confidence in one's ability to comply with all.

Add to this the fact that BA has lost at two tribunals and perhaps the safest conculsion is that we don't know what the outcome will be.

As they say in your country, it will come out in the wash.

A Contract is not necessarily a contract
 

This is not always the case. A few years ago women employed by the RAF had to leave when they became pregnant. This was a "legal" contract agreed and signed by both parties. This contract had its roots in the past but the laws of the land had moved on and this contract became illegal and those ladies that had been sacked were subsequently awarded substantial compensation.

This case may end up with a similar result - with those already retired receiving compensation but not their jobs back, and those remaining to stay until normal UK retirement age.

Read the case -

British Airways Plc v Mak & Ors [2010] UKEAT 0055_09_2001 (20 January 2010)