Hello Murg. This is true, and reflects appallingly on WW, and yet there's no surprise in that.

I flew to Bilbao one day, long before 9/11, and the girls told us we had a retired BOAC skipper aboard who would like to pay a courtesy call. Up came this wonderful old gent who had flown Connies and the like, who had been retired Thirty Five Years. We were captivated by tales of the atlantic crossing in days of yore, by his charm and general wisdom and understanding. It was flattering that he took such an interest in the aircraft and airline.

He built the company I joined, and I was proud to have flown him that day. To desert people like this is typical of the callow, self-serving greed that poses as man management these days. Doesn't Bob Ayling still have staff travel for life? I know many senior managers do on retirement.

Current staff built the BA brand as best they could in the face of SARS/ 9-11/ Gulf War One and Two etc etc and the pay back is to out-source your job to a set up where, in the pilots case, we are told we may "contaminate" the company. This calculated insult is all part of the sheer breathtaking arrogance of WW - must be why he was recruited as its very much in the BA tradition - but hubris will get him in the end.

On that theme I believe we should ask the combined BA unions to act on behalf of ALL the BA pensioners to get this cruel, cynical kick in the face for elderly retired staff rescinded. It would send a good message if BALPA led this initiative. How about it?

And just who will this so-called 'expert witness' be, who stands sworn before the court to tell the truth, hand on heart, keeping a straight face and say, 'BALPA have damaged BA's reputation in the following way...............................
Even if the judge is bought and paid for he would never listen to such tripe.

You suggested that having a worthy case justified high risks in terms of costs. I don't agree. I think the only thing which justifies high risks in terms of legal costs is having the money to cover them. Clear now?

There is a subtext. It is that your suggestion that merit justifies high risk didn't suggest to me that you had ever actually had to make such a decision yourself with your own money. Also, I didn't get the impression you know yourself what the legal merits of the case are. Cheerleaders are showing a lot of leg, and nice though it may be I am still hoping for the hairy ones of a player who can actually say how the ball is to be kicked.

Whatever. He asked a good question, was disparaged for it, but no one has yet bothered to answer, except to say that maybe the entire British trades union movement will jump in to this "test case". If I were running BALPA, I wouldn't bet my organisation on that.

I'm still reading this thread hoping to find a reasonable analysis of the situation, about which I know yet very little, but which interests me highly for all sorts of reasons. Anyone care to jump in?

PBL

Wall Street Journal Comment:
 

Interesting:

and then:

and finally:

I hope BA pilots know what they are doing; it's really market forces running the show now, and they tend to favour the most competitive. Sure, WWW is a :mad:, but unfortunately for BALPA he has the big battalions. Bottom line is that BA management have bet the farm, and I can't think of many instances when pilots, or even staff in general have beaten their management on a major industrial issue in a downturn, with appalling Company financial debts and leverage.
Be careful what you wish for......:oh:

We are part of the solution. We know we are part of the solution. Unfortunately, you need to get that through the thick skulls of the oxygen wasters who call themselves BA management.:=

What was the title of this thread?
 

Probably. But their aims definitively don't include winning this in court because this case is soooo unwinable.

If this farce gets to court, in order to win the BA will have to prove that:

1) there was indeed quantyfiable damage to BA's reputation&brand. Some very expert and very expensive witness will have to come forward and state: "The BA's reputation & brand is now worth xxx squilion quids less than it was a couple of months ago"

2) the same or similarly qualyfied and expensive witness will have to state under oath that all or a prt of it was caused by BALPA's strike poll and not by generally low quality of BA's pax service, which went from bad to worse with moving to T5

3) final and most difficult thing to prove will be that the BALPA's actions were illegal. Of course, I'm not familiar with British labour law and I might be mistaken; perhaps any form of strike is completely illegal in UK. :E

So who bankrolls the BALPA? Who cares! It only needs to contest point 3 in order to win this and it should not be too expensive. Let's say it will cost about 50 quids to print all the records of BALPA - BA mgt meetings and deliver it to court. However it would be a pyrrhic victory as costs of expert/expensive witnesses wouldn't be covered by BA managers personally, but by BA and it would eventually trickle down to employees.

Yes indeed. It's the wafer thin margins that brought the not-the-very-best and not-quite-brightest of the management to airline industry. While airline execs bonuses may seem obscenely high to rank and file, compared to remunarations in some other more profitable ventures (like investment banking :E) they are very low indeed.

Now I am handicapped by being born on the wrong side of the iron curtain (remember it, kids?) and I'm not quite sure whether this striking example of human resource mismanagement, brought to you by the Financial times
is a part of market forces too? And if it is, shall the pilots act to offset it? Please enlighten me, please.

Now let's indulge in some numerology.

What was the profit of BA last year?
What was the fine it had to pay because EC found it guilty of conspiring with Virgin?
What was the total amount that the BA has paid to its pilots last year?

Short answers please. Thank you.

Suing your own employees via their union is not a very smart thing to do, period, especially in a "people oriented" business.

Unless you want to break their back, in which case it is very effective in doing that if you win.

Are you perchance confusing strategy with moral worthiness?

PBL

Goes to show what happens when a pilot tries to run an airline.... pilots don't like it. Get real, you have good conditions, higher than average conditions. Whats so bad??

PBL, having a sullen cowed workforce is not very good for business when you rely on said sullen cowed workers to deliver your product.

But the narcissists running the show don't understand that, because they don't do empathy.

Sunfish,

A workforce is not necessarily a uniform entity. Let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

I have a cost problem. I have a rival whose tail numbers begin with EI who is adding routes by the week, and getting ever more people to sit on his planes. I have another rival who gets himself photographed with the PM on a train as the face of the "New British entrepreneurship". And I have personnel costs going through the roof, as well as big problems getting done what needs to be done.

Sullen part of the workforce? All over 45. Enthusiastic part of the workforce proud to continue a great tradition? All under 40. Expensive personnel? All over 50 with 5-bedroom houses in Surrey who like to reminisce with their stockbroker neighbors about the great old days of VC-10s and Tridents, and who run pilot WWW sites in their copious free time. Cheap personnel? All under 40 with who are content with their digs in Islington and are happy to put any food on the table with regularity for their one- and two-year old children. Now, which demogaphic best fits those of my continuing successful rivals?

So maybe I can draw a line whereby those expensive 5-bedroom home owners will finally consider it the end of empire and retire early to grow their dahlias and endlessly recount their humiliation to their neighbors, leaving plenty of attractive positions open to those hard-working Islingtonese who are actually pretty fed up of doing the same job as their home-county leftseaters for the price of a flat in Finsbury.

So maybe I decide to try break the union (which is pretty broken in any case although few of its older members have noticed). And I rely on a certain lack of solidarity on the part of ex-coalminers, postmen and other TUC stalwarts towards their supposed "coworkers" still living on high-five-figure salaries with 5-bedroom homes in Surrey.

And I rely on lots of these people calling me a blue meanie without actually having a clue as to what I am actually complaining about in court. And giving that clear idea to the press. In other words, I stand a good chance of gaining public sympathy by defending my poor hard-working underappreciated baggage handlers against attempts to ruin my company by high-five-figure-salary elitist employees with homes in Surrey.

Please note, "merits" of whatever case plays no role here. This is pure politics. Which I am not forbidden from playing.

Plausible or not?

PBL

Beautifully plausible , Sir :E

All very plausible, however pay (or t&c's) HAVE been benchmarked in a time where the pound was much stronger against the euro. Check AF/KLM/LH/IB scales for comparable figures.

Be careful not to measure with two yard sticks.

I certainly do not see a DIRECT rival knocking at our door that severely undercuts the current 'market rate'. As we see at the moment with the economic downturn starting to take it's toll on the airline industry, there are only very few companies with robust enough margins.

IF the market shows a clear sign that margins are getting smaller and smaller and there is a threat of insolvency then I am prepared to talk about the contract I knowingly signed for at the start.
However I will NOT accept the company to screw me over behind my back, making the airline laughing stock by bad management and saying we are not 'flexible' enough to be operators of BA aircraft from mainland Europe. Whilst squandering close to half a Billion pounds in fines/court cases and operational blunders!!

Margins have only grown in BA in recent years, with massive debt reductions and enormous goodwill of its most loyal group.
The cost is not directly at the front line, its the monolith structure in the back offices.
A nationalised mindset in a privatised company.
That is the 'evil' we are fighting against.

I hope we can get it sorted through discussion, but I will stand firm if required to

PBL, taking your question first, no it's not plausible, not that it won't stop people trying to make it so.

Yes, you have a cost problem.

Yes, EI is wiping the floor with you. But what have your costs got to do with EI's or VB's market share? Nothing. VB and EI produce a better customer experience than you do. The BA management reaction of cutting costs ensures that your product will become even more inferior to your competitors.

Your comment about all over 45 being unenthusiastic and all under 40 being enthusiastic about being part of a "New BA" is rubbish on at least four levels.

For a start, I know many "Old Fogies" who are conservative, risk averse drones who are in their early thirties, and I know Eighty years olds who still have active enquiring minds and an urge to innovate and change things.

Secondly, there is a concept called "institutional knowledge", which is the sum total of the experience in your company, much of it contained in the heads of the greybeards. You may be surprised to know that there is nothing new under the sun, and if you wish to avoid making mistakes, you will make use of that knowledge. Discount it at your peril.

I will go on to say that the T5 debacle is a classic "Thirty something" type of mistake. The "Fifty somethings" and "Sixty somethings" would have seen this coming in my opinion, and avoided it.

As for your comments about income levels and age, they are both wrong and offensive. What happens to the "40 somethings" who you now say will work for peanuts. What happens to them in their turn when they reach 45? Are they to be thrown on the scrapheap as well? Is there not a premium on experience in your world? I again refer you to the T5 debacle - that's what happens if you don't listen to the voice of experience.

There is an old saying; "Youth and enthusiasm will always be beaten by old age and cunning", which to my mind explains the virtues of having a good mix of both in any organisation. Monocultures of particular age groups are going to make the sort of mistakes common to it's age group.

If BA wants to go down the monoculture road, management will have a lovely time......no arguments, no conflict........right up until they hit the brick wall.

Excellent post Sunfish


Just an interested observer, but glad to see hear a well reasoned argument against the 'cut to the bone' and alarmingly MOL-esque posts going round here which would have been news in themselves just a few years back.

Do a search on a news magazine article posing MOL and WWW up against eachother......

The main feature being, WWW was a former top man in the Aer Lingus Pilots Union, who had crossed over to management.

Poacher turned Gamekeeper indeed...

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/1676,features,

wouldn't that be more like gamekeeper turned poacher?

Sunfish,

thanks for engaging the argument.

Just as you found the arguments I proposed not completely plausible, I am not sure I find all the counterarguments you proposed completely plausible either.

Older pilots are expensive; younger pilots are cheaper. Younger airlines have less expensive pilots because they haven't been around as long. Pilots may only be part of your costs, but they are (a) threatening to ruin your business model by striking, and (b) still more expensive than at younger airlines. So if you can annoy the older guys into early retirement, you have indeed reduced costs.

I don't see how reducing costs of pilots by breaking the union is going to lead to a product inferior to competitors. Their pilots seem to be able to fly aircraft just fine also.

It is an exaggeration, certainly, but I doubt it is rubbish. There are plenty of industries where the phenomena of disgruntled / expensive / inflexible coincide more or less with "older". My day job, academia, is one. The profession of my partner, health care, is another. Indeed, it is very specific in her institution. If you read the letters in Aviation Week regularly, you will find that the entire U.S. aviation engineering community might well be another.

Yes, of course. But that is an argument why one's more experienced employees might be valuable. It is not an argument why they might be less expensive (they aren't) or less disgruntled (they aren't). It might be an argument why getting them to retire early won't improve your bottom line *in the long run*, but it surely is not an argument why getting them to retire early won't improve your bottom line *for the next couple of years*.

Interesting hypothesis, and of course one which should be realised in the best of all possible worlds. Of course, I would said that since I fit the demographic and try to make part of my living persuading others that our extensive experience will benefit them enormously.

Indeed, if you were to adduce any examples of recently-introduced major airport infrastructure which *hasn't* started with a debacle, it might lend your observation some weight. But I am more inclined not to say the T5 thing was specifically British, or British A, or British AA (although the exact extent and duration of it might be), but to observe that it has happened everywhere in the last twenty years. There appears to be nobody in the world who both knows how to avoid such things and has a track record to prove it.

For example, this is not the first automated baggage system to go haywire. Denver International had a similar experience. It is a big complex computerised system and the experience is that, of such systems which actually do manage to make it to commissioning, over 50% of them subsequently get thrown away as unusable. The others get patched and patched and patched until something workable comes out. That is just the way things are. Nothing special here with who is managing it.

"Offensive" is not relevant. Please do not mistake an argument I wrote down for my actual views.

My shareholders evaluate me on my performance on a time scale less than five years. Maybe I or my successor will have to break the union of those guys as well in five years. Maybe it will be necessary every five years from now until the end of time. Or maybe they'll all get used to their flats in Islington for the duration of their careers and we correspondingly won't have as much to gain by cutting those costs.

Well, I might agree with that, but at the same time I might not see how my airline would concretely suffer if I shift the pilot demographic forcibly towards younger and cheaper. After all, my competitors seem to be able to make do with younger and cheaper. Why not me?

That might be your take on the situation, but it is more of a belief than it is a business argument, right?

There is another argument which I didn't adduce so far. Maybe if the key part of my workforce is choosing to engage in public conflict with me, maybe I had just better win that fight, whatever it takes. If my neighbor parks his car across my driveway and tells me I had better do exactly what he wants, then what are my chances of getting what I want by praising his experience and standing in the community? Probably more effective to have my wife call the tow truck at the same time as I praise his experience and standing in the community to his face, around the corner where he can't see his car being towed away until it's too late. And that not only solves my immediate problem but maybe my neighbor on the other side will also get the idea that he shouldn't try that either.

PBL

If "whatever it takes" is bankrupting your business, I'd think twice and perhaps consider a negotiated solution. You also have to ask yourself why the key part of your workforce is choosing to engage in a public conflict with you. Perhaps it's because they can see that the only way of trying to reduce their employment costs/screw them out of their current benefits (the same thing in fact although it rather depends on your point of view) is by trying to get round the union and employ staff on different rates ultimately to compete in-house with the main workforce. The problem occurs when the union has seen it coming and puts it's foot down, which leads back to the negotiated solution.

To compare it to your analogy, what happens if your neighbour knows this has happened to another neighbour in the past and is well aware of who drives the tow truck?

perhaps BALPA should countersue BA for the threat to the future of its pilot's reputation and employment as a result of BA's continued complete incompetence in managing terminal 5.

simple flight from T5 - Rome yesterday and still lots of bags lost! (not even a transfer to complicate things)