BA pilots 'prepared to strike'?
Couldonlyaffordafiver
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Re-heat,
... because if I were, it would be illegal.
There may not be for you but there is for me. I knew that when I signed up. The compensation for not being able to move sideways between companies is a decent pension.
Suggest you engage yours and imagine being on that same aeroplane....
You are not asked to work to their levels ....
There is no seniority based upon years of employment and no annual pay rise.
I therefore leave it to your imagination as to what happens when the company fails to file the Form 10-K with the SEC on time, where criminal penalties exist and the airline ceases to exist when liquidated by creditors. Feel free to imagine what the aforementioned capitalists will do if you continue to perform as currently.
In conclusion - some people's lack of empathy for their co-workers is appalling, and your PR is dire.
Engage brain before opening mouth (or typing).
In conclusion - some people's lack of empathy for their co-workers is appalling, and your PR is dire.
Engage brain before opening mouth (or typing).
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HF
It was you who said that city types were fools for working long hours, and I drew no comparisons with the flight deck in my rebuttal - I was setting the record straight.
My last point (quoted by yourself above) clearly relates to you considering the wider airline and the immediate and serious implications of others not performing their job. I repeat - ground staff too can cause as immediate consequences as an aviation disaster in running a company.
I shall await a constructive response to reply further...quite clearly my main point are so strong that you have to resort to plain obnoxiousness?
It was you who said that city types were fools for working long hours, and I drew no comparisons with the flight deck in my rebuttal - I was setting the record straight.
My last point (quoted by yourself above) clearly relates to you considering the wider airline and the immediate and serious implications of others not performing their job. I repeat - ground staff too can cause as immediate consequences as an aviation disaster in running a company.
I shall await a constructive response to reply further...quite clearly my main point are so strong that you have to resort to plain obnoxiousness?
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Actually I believe it was I who described the city types as fools, or more specifically Slow Descent for his complaints about working 36 hours non-stop. If you work in the city and accept the money then you accept the hours. No point complaining about how hard you're working if thats what you signed yp to and thats what triggers your bonus.
I signed up to a job with a pensions plan and accepted the sacrifices in career progression, salary and lifestyle that entailed. Now I'm being asked to make more sacrifices whilst seeing that pension snatched away. Do you think the city boys would be staying at Goldman Sachs if the management told them there'd be no more bonuses because the company had to use the money to invest in the business?
I signed up to a job with a pensions plan and accepted the sacrifices in career progression, salary and lifestyle that entailed. Now I'm being asked to make more sacrifices whilst seeing that pension snatched away. Do you think the city boys would be staying at Goldman Sachs if the management told them there'd be no more bonuses because the company had to use the money to invest in the business?
Controversial, moi?
but it does not detract from the fact that it is the most rubbish defecit(sic) of all the FTSE companies
It is a great shame that once again a thread degenerates into willy waving because an office worker in the same company is brave enough to politely express an opinion.
Any chance we could stick to the debate, I find the smouldering martyr style posts quite demeaning?
Couldonlyaffordafiver
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Re-heat,
Where, exactly?
Agreed but they're unlikely to kill themselves and take a few hundred others with them when they do it.
It was you who said that city types were fools for working long hours...
I repeat - ground staff too can cause as immediate consequences as an aviation disaster in running a company.
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It was more the "daft enough to work for a bunch of thieves" comment to which I drew particular attention to quash.
Yes, changing working conditions will draw particular ire from any employee group whom is used to one situation or another (BOTH pilots, support staff, managers and groundcrew); the real difference is that the large change has not yet happened from the state-owned BA to the privately-owned BA. I think that the appreciation that the company is not able to support people NOT working to the max is not there, but it should be - because what else do you expect from a company that has to compete with othere who do?
True, if one works in the city that is taken as part and parcel of the job, but there needs to be more appreciation that we are all professinals working for companies whose needs are not fixed in stone and do change. Whatever you pay a Goldman Sachs banker, you will still irk him and his family to send him to NY over an Easter when he has planned other things.
Nobody is trying to compare the two since, as you rightly say:
The difference is that in the real world the Goldman bonuses are snatched away in the bad times, but people still fight for the jobs as there always remains the prospect of future riches - and when that occurs the whole market is suffering so there are no job alternatives.
The comparison that can be made is that both are companies owned by shareholders who require a return, and with creditors who must be paid. Why would you want to own a company with bolshy, self-important employees, who cannot empathise with how their fellow employees have to work to keep the whole thing together, and erode the value of your company?
The PR needs to be better to get any empathy from the public.
HF Apologies - I misread one of your lines above - it was not you!
I am not diminishing the importance of safety. I am stressing that it is not all that is important. What is the value of a very safe uneconomic company? NIL
Yes, changing working conditions will draw particular ire from any employee group whom is used to one situation or another (BOTH pilots, support staff, managers and groundcrew); the real difference is that the large change has not yet happened from the state-owned BA to the privately-owned BA. I think that the appreciation that the company is not able to support people NOT working to the max is not there, but it should be - because what else do you expect from a company that has to compete with othere who do?
True, if one works in the city that is taken as part and parcel of the job, but there needs to be more appreciation that we are all professinals working for companies whose needs are not fixed in stone and do change. Whatever you pay a Goldman Sachs banker, you will still irk him and his family to send him to NY over an Easter when he has planned other things.
Nobody is trying to compare the two since, as you rightly say:
I signed up to a job with a pensions plan and accepted the sacrifices in career progression, salary and lifestyle that entailed. Now I'm being asked to make more sacrifices whilst seeing that pension snatched away.
The comparison that can be made is that both are companies owned by shareholders who require a return, and with creditors who must be paid. Why would you want to own a company with bolshy, self-important employees, who cannot empathise with how their fellow employees have to work to keep the whole thing together, and erode the value of your company?
The PR needs to be better to get any empathy from the public.
HF Apologies - I misread one of your lines above - it was not you!
Agreed but they're unlikely to kill themselves and take a few hundred others with them when they do it.
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Apology accepted. This will be my last post in this particular argument.
From a PR point of view, we neither need nor want public empathy. We require BA to honour a promise which it has been proven that it can afford - as well it should, being the most profitable airline in the world. A little research on the internet will reveal this evidence.
I'm inclined to agree with you in fact. There are numerous examples within BA of where this is the case, which I will leave to others to detail if they see fit. The Flight Operations department is not one of them. On longhaul, most pilots are regularly working to maximum LEGAL annual hours and have been for several years. It is starting to become the case on shorthaul as well. In the past, it was difficult to achieve this due to inefficient rostering by the company. There has to be some slack in the system to take into account the unforeseen - diversions and bad weather disruption, for example. This slack has been eroded to the extent that it is now no longer there in practical strength and a significant disruption now results in chaos.
I couldn't agree more, being one of the "fellow employees" who tries to hold everything together every time I turn up, despite the best efforts of others to prevent it.
Night.
From a PR point of view, we neither need nor want public empathy. We require BA to honour a promise which it has been proven that it can afford - as well it should, being the most profitable airline in the world. A little research on the internet will reveal this evidence.
I think that the appreciation that the company is not able to support people NOT working to the max is not there...
I'm inclined to agree with you in fact. There are numerous examples within BA of where this is the case, which I will leave to others to detail if they see fit. The Flight Operations department is not one of them. On longhaul, most pilots are regularly working to maximum LEGAL annual hours and have been for several years. It is starting to become the case on shorthaul as well. In the past, it was difficult to achieve this due to inefficient rostering by the company. There has to be some slack in the system to take into account the unforeseen - diversions and bad weather disruption, for example. This slack has been eroded to the extent that it is now no longer there in practical strength and a significant disruption now results in chaos.
Why would you want to own a company with bolshy, self-important employees, who cannot empathise with how their fellow employees have to work to keep the whole thing together...
I couldn't agree more, being one of the "fellow employees" who tries to hold everything together every time I turn up, despite the best efforts of others to prevent it.
Night.
rzw30:
Were you working for BA in Lord King's time? If so then you might remember or be interested to know that 3 people in Laker Airways commited suicide when we were put out of business. One of them was a very young engineering apprentice which was particularly sad.
As a proportion of the BA workforce you have another 30 - 40 suicides to go before you can catch up pro-rata.
That is not a very nice prospect but I cannot see that this can be prevented for all of the departments in the world's favourite airline seem to love each other so much.
Were you working for BA in Lord King's time? If so then you might remember or be interested to know that 3 people in Laker Airways commited suicide when we were put out of business. One of them was a very young engineering apprentice which was particularly sad.
As a proportion of the BA workforce you have another 30 - 40 suicides to go before you can catch up pro-rata.
That is not a very nice prospect but I cannot see that this can be prevented for all of the departments in the world's favourite airline seem to love each other so much.
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Re-Heat, it's interesting that you talk about our lack of empathy with other workers. I'm sure for most of us the real world experience is quite the opposite - most other workers we meet, in fact most people in general, have a totally blinkered view of what we do, largely based on hearsay and films. No amount of good PR will change that. It's we who need to be on the receiving end of some positive empathy!
I would also hazard a guess that a large number of us have experience of doing other jobs at one time or another, while few other workers have experience of being a professional pilot. So this lack of empathy you accuse us of hardly seems to hold water as a factual proposition.
But anyway, that is all just a distraction from your main argument, which would appear to be that the management do everything for the good of an efficient, profitable company, and the pilots do everything they can to stop them because they are prone to laziness and out of touch with 'real' work.
Perhaps too simplistic for you? Well that's how it's coming across. Aren't management human as well? Do they never have their own little hidden agendas which might not always be for the total good? Do they never try to push the boundaries? See how much productivity they can squeeze out of people? Or maybe they'll be in a perfect Adam Smith type capitalist utopia once they get rid of those pesky pilots.
The only people who care about the pilots' terms and conditions are the pilots. How could you not expect them to fight their corner? Would management do anything different?
I would also hazard a guess that a large number of us have experience of doing other jobs at one time or another, while few other workers have experience of being a professional pilot. So this lack of empathy you accuse us of hardly seems to hold water as a factual proposition.
But anyway, that is all just a distraction from your main argument, which would appear to be that the management do everything for the good of an efficient, profitable company, and the pilots do everything they can to stop them because they are prone to laziness and out of touch with 'real' work.
Perhaps too simplistic for you? Well that's how it's coming across. Aren't management human as well? Do they never have their own little hidden agendas which might not always be for the total good? Do they never try to push the boundaries? See how much productivity they can squeeze out of people? Or maybe they'll be in a perfect Adam Smith type capitalist utopia once they get rid of those pesky pilots.
The only people who care about the pilots' terms and conditions are the pilots. How could you not expect them to fight their corner? Would management do anything different?
Controversial, moi?
I could quote the number of pilots within BA and known to me who have also taken their own lives.
No group in any company has exclusive rights to conditions so awful that employees commit suicide, it is a sad fact that it happens in all areas of life and the comparisons are as meaningless as they are tasteless.
No group in any company has exclusive rights to conditions so awful that employees commit suicide, it is a sad fact that it happens in all areas of life and the comparisons are as meaningless as they are tasteless.
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I find this constant "BA are the most profitable airline in the world therefore they can afford to pay" angle quite interesting.
Certainly someone who made a long-term investment decision based on a possibly isolated "purple patch" that cannot yet be proven as part of a trend combined with a possible $100 oil price and interuption of Iranian supply (as a result of conflict no less!) has no business being in charge of an airline.
Fortunately, WW is not a moron, unlike the people making this suggestion!
Certainly someone who made a long-term investment decision based on a possibly isolated "purple patch" that cannot yet be proven as part of a trend combined with a possible $100 oil price and interuption of Iranian supply (as a result of conflict no less!) has no business being in charge of an airline.
Fortunately, WW is not a moron, unlike the people making this suggestion!
M.Mouse:
I quite agree that bringing up the subject of suicide could be considered as tasteless but it was one of your lot that raised the subject in the first place and I was simply trying to point out that this was nothing new.
I have had five personal experiences of this phenomena in my life and every one of them was inexplicable.
Two of them worked (many years ago) for a well-known airline at Luton and I believe their score for that year was four.
I apologise if you think I was taking a cheap shot but I also think that people who use the threat of mass suicide to defend their argument are generally not worth listening to.
I quite agree that bringing up the subject of suicide could be considered as tasteless but it was one of your lot that raised the subject in the first place and I was simply trying to point out that this was nothing new.
I have had five personal experiences of this phenomena in my life and every one of them was inexplicable.
Two of them worked (many years ago) for a well-known airline at Luton and I believe their score for that year was four.
I apologise if you think I was taking a cheap shot but I also think that people who use the threat of mass suicide to defend their argument are generally not worth listening to.
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BahrainLad - This "possibly isolated purple patch" stretches back from the day BA was privatised circa 1986 to the present time. During that period BA has only once failed to turn a profit. At all other times up to 2001 not only has the company been in the black it has returned a substantial amount of money to investors by way of dividends.
But then that was not very difficult when the tax payer gave you a whole airline and all of its infrastructure for next to nothing.
From where I was sitting the billiard table had just adopted an 80° tilt in the favour of BA.
From where I was sitting the billiard table had just adopted an 80° tilt in the favour of BA.
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Well thats your opinion but if it really was as easy as you claim then they'd have been raking in the profits for the previous umpteen years when they were state owned and bordering on a monopoly would they not? Perhaps you still think they have a monopoly and thats why they are profitable today?
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It may indeed come across as arguments of mine that support management, however I assure you that this is quite the contrary - I am well aware of the appalling quality that you have to endure. I post to ensure that one-sided tosh is not allowed to stand, and that some understanding of the real economics of the business is communicated.
Let me give you a prime example of poor management decisionmaking:
BA, as we all know eliminates jobs within the support functions quite frequently, however is fairly averse to paying out redundancy payments for compulsory redundancy.
They therefore are - at the very moment - offering roles to people who should by rights be fired as their roles are no longer required, within the highly specialised role of financial internal audit.
Whilst you might expect this role to be one that is filled by a qualified accountant, it is in fact one that is filled by people who are neither qualified for the role nor have appropriate accountancy qualifications - yet another example of the prime state-run company mentality pervading, years after the company has been privatised.
Your managers will continue to be utterly useless until they ensure that qualified people work in appropriate jobs, and that they hire from outside - even in the current environment of being an attack on the cost base - to ensure that top class is retained.
Maximum
I have contributed today as I am neither anti-flight crew nor pro-management, but that a Waterside employee posted a valid comment, but for which he was ridiculed by unempathetic posters.
Yes - I do believe that there are large elements of the company that are inefficient, and, I know that there are further inefficiencies. These must be shared.
Hmm - bilaterals restricting N Atlantic competition - not far off. What % slots are controlled at Heathrow - prime airport of the pre-eminent European financial capital?
Let me give you a prime example of poor management decisionmaking:
BA, as we all know eliminates jobs within the support functions quite frequently, however is fairly averse to paying out redundancy payments for compulsory redundancy.
They therefore are - at the very moment - offering roles to people who should by rights be fired as their roles are no longer required, within the highly specialised role of financial internal audit.
Whilst you might expect this role to be one that is filled by a qualified accountant, it is in fact one that is filled by people who are neither qualified for the role nor have appropriate accountancy qualifications - yet another example of the prime state-run company mentality pervading, years after the company has been privatised.
Your managers will continue to be utterly useless until they ensure that qualified people work in appropriate jobs, and that they hire from outside - even in the current environment of being an attack on the cost base - to ensure that top class is retained.
Maximum
I have contributed today as I am neither anti-flight crew nor pro-management, but that a Waterside employee posted a valid comment, but for which he was ridiculed by unempathetic posters.
Yes - I do believe that there are large elements of the company that are inefficient, and, I know that there are further inefficiencies. These must be shared.
Perhaps you still think they have a monopoly and thats why they are profitable today?
Last edited by Re-Heat; 2nd May 2006 at 21:01.
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Originally Posted by Hand Solo
Well thats your opinion but if it really was as easy as you claim then they'd have been raking in the profits for the previous umpteen years when they were state owned and bordering on a monopoly would they not? Perhaps you still think they have a monopoly and thats why they are profitable today?
Controversial, moi?
JW411
I didn't think you were taking a cheap shot I just felt the direction of the thread was not one that was pleasant or productive to pursue.
Far less than any other flag carrier at their home airport actually.
Except in those days it didn't make a profit and certainly I wouldn't class the pilot workforce of today in BA, the only group I am truly qualified to judge, as 'heavily unionised and inefficient'.
If I didn't know better I would think you had an axe to grind.
I didn't think you were taking a cheap shot I just felt the direction of the thread was not one that was pleasant or productive to pursue.
What % slots are controlled at Heathrow - prime airport of the pre-eminent European financial capital?
Hmmm...seem to recall BA before privatisation was characterised by a heavily unionised, inefficient workforce willing to see the airline go to the wall rather than.....oh, wait...
If I didn't know better I would think you had an axe to grind.
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No axe to grind at all (although it always seems to come back to that, doesn't it?) other than the fact that there are a hell of a lot of people, inside and out of BA (look at the commercial impact on London having a world-class airline calling it home for instance) who stand to loose a great deal if the airline goes to the wall, and we are slightly concerned at phrases such as "I'd rather see the airline go under than let these bastards win" which are about as selfish as they are irrational and inaccurate...
Controversial, moi?
who stand to loose(sic) a great deal if the airline goes to the wall, and we are slightly concerned at phrases such as "I'd rather see the airline go under than let these bastards win" which are about as selfish as they are irrational and inaccurate...
Seems fair to me.