If you reduce your fleets and employees by 25%, then of course it will take many years to recover to 2019 levels!

You would need expansion of 33%.

Is this actually being proposed in Aer Lingus ?

No it's not..... 50% PT probably getting back towards 80% as the schedule recovers whenever. Combination of unpaid leave, and VS and part time. Redundancy would only be a last resort and strictly on inverse seniority (LIFO).

​​​​​​Lots of cheap pilots at the bottom of the list, get rid of them and the unit costs go through the roof.

Department management would have come with a cost ( along with a date ) where its more cost efficient to keep staff on rather than making redundencies (which also comes at cost) .
The numbers will only go up as time goes on without any profitable flying.

DurIng the Great Depression the US government embarked on some huge infrastructure projects to help a beleaguered economy. It could be argued that the economic damage that C19 is doing to our economy that we need similar large projects such as HS2 and the 3rd runway now more than ever..

What would you do if and when you find you are going to be made compulsorily redundant, as either a captain or first officer, based solely on LIFO?

That is a distinct probability in BA, Virgin and Aer Lingus. In BA and Virgin it will probably be those caught after both airlines have chopped pilots on a particular fleet. TUI, yet to announce redundancies do, I believe, have some form of matrix but it is likely to be weighted in favour of LIFO, which it should not be.

An idea might be to get together with colleagues in the same boat, research the most recent equality and anti-discrimination legislation, which states that LIFO cannot be used as the only method.

Once that is accepted and because LIFO isn’t fair as it is indirect age discrimination against the young put some dosh in a pot and employ a good (most important) employment lawyer to, in the first instant fire a warning shot at both your company and your representatives (BALPA) to pre-warn them that formal action will be forth coming if they do not follow current employment legislation with regard to making people redundant.

Although LIFO is a straightforward and simple method for making people redundant it was removed from the statute books because it was deemed to be unfair.

If redundancies are going to be made they should be fair. All parties to the redundancy negotiations are responsible for ensuring that current legislation is followed.

Whether it is or is not age discrimination, LIFO (and seniority in general) is by definition a form of discrimination, and one that it would be hard to justify in the latest iterations of EU and UK employment law.

Panel 3. You appear to have missed the most important point.

The most recent equality and anti-discrimination legislation states that LIFO cannot be used as the sole method for redundancy selection.

I know that if I was going too affected by LIFO as the sole selection method I would be challenging it.

I hope you would agree that it is important that fair criteria are used to select individuals for redundancy. If LIFO is one of the benchmarks used it should not be weighted more heavily than other criteria such as disciplinary records, attendance records (Absence for pregnancy should be ignored), work performance, qualifications, experience etc.

You appear to have more faith in unions than I do and few have faith in management. If the contract you sign does not meet with current legislation then it can be trampled all over. Legislation also changes and any changes must be reflected in an individual’s contract of employment.

At the end of the day this is going to be a fight about people keeping their job and those threatened with redundancy purely on the basis of LIFO should fight it tooth and nail.

that would be a fair/reasonable way to approach this. IAG senior management on the other hand...

Am I missing the point here? (Quite possibly).

It strikes me that BA wish to remove at a stroke all the disparities in pay, allowances, and pensions. These exist in the pilot and cabin crew workforces, and have been a bone of contention with management for a long time.

These disparities may also exist in other parts of the BA workforce too. I imagine the same objective applies i.e.a level playing field with regard to "competitive" terms and conditions .

I am not insinuating that this is a good thing, nor otherwise. It seems that many of the suggestions and arguments being put forward here ignore these sometimes gross differences in pay and rewards for employees doing the same job.

The issue for Balpa here (with such large potential numbers involved) is that pressing on with trying to maintain pure LIFO from the bottom of the MSL will not deliver the required savings for BA (simply put you’re getting rid of the cheapest pilots at the lower rungs of PP34). That poses something of a quandary as inevitably that will in turn mean a greater number of total redundancies in order to make up the difference. So do you hold firm on the principle of LIFO and accept there will be a greater number of casualties or do you try to limit the number of those affected by CR by trying to acquiesce to an extent with the BA plan but holding them to LIFO where possible? Hopefully we can get away without any CR but I think that’s an absolute pipe dream right now considering where we are and where we’re about to go with the 14 day quarantine on incoming pax.

[QUOTE=Once that is accepted and because LIFO isn’t fair as it is indirect age discrimination against the young put some dosh in a pot and employ a good (most important) employment lawyer to, in the first instant fire a warning shot at both your company and your representatives (BALPA) to pre-warn them that formal action will be forth coming if they do not follow current employment legislation with regard to making people redundant.

.[/QUOTE]

Great idea. Based on personal experience during a takeover, I strongly recommend a big city law firm. Forget high street solicitors etc.,

We used Slaughter and May, heavyweights, recommended to me by an old friend who is now Chairman of a huge and succesful UK company.They were not cheap but were highly effective and got results.

Nice video
 

Why is LIFO unfair (based on it being discriminatory) when the whole purpose of the exercise is to discriminate between staff in order to remove some of them (those who have been discriminated against) from the payroll ? Surely, ANY method used to determine who should stay or go is discriminatory.

Video - am sure the ubiquitous Labi Sifre will be dusted off and rolled out soon 😭

if onay they’d operated those flights from Prestwick in the snow or pulled the window blinds down or handed out a cold towel !

Am hugely sympathetic to the pilots though in this situation......

Somethings are illegal to 'discriminate' upon - age is one of them. Its my understanding that LIFO in our industry is likely so highly correlated with age that it could be illegal.

I can't think of a 'fair' way to decide; I don't think one exists (and I imagine what one perceives as fair would depend on their own circumstances!). As I've said before, ultimately, the business don't care about fairness and will employ whatever methodology suits them best.

Lifo
 

In many airlines collective agreements clearly state the LIFO principle as the way to go. In our careers in major companies seniority is held sacred and something that binds us to a certain employer, which is actually a very good thing.

The big dillema companies and unions are facing in a crisis of this magnitude is as said above, cutting of the lower end of the seniority list according to LIFO principles will reduce headcount as per reduced capacity but only just that. Financially speaking it would be like a drop in the ocean. To achieve a substantial cost reduction a huge amount of pilots on the lower end of the seniority list would have to be made redundant. If the top of the seniority list would leave/retire/ be made redundant, a much smaller number of pilots would need to leave to achieve the same cost reduction.

In my opinion possible solutions could be temporary collective sharing of full time employment by working and earning a reduced % similar to the required manpower reduction, another option would be a voluntary redundancy package for the top end of the seniority list, close to retirement which then would (partially) be funded by the rest of the pilot community.

Why is LIFO ageist? BA employs pilots from across the age spectrum.

The reason being is that because younger people are most likely to be selected for redundancy and that amounts to a disadvantage based on age and may give rise to a claim for indirect age discrimination. Because of the reasonably recent enactment of the equality and anti-discrimination legislation, LIFO cannot now be used as the only measure to decide who is going to lose their jobs in a redundancy situation