BA

[Mark]

This is true, but the target impact should be the company, not the public. Of course, the two go together so it's impossible to do anything but have a PR disaster.

[Dymetrie]

Originally Posted by Pebs

Words in my mouth.....

I no nothing about any of it, and I'm not massively interested. But I don't imagine the decision to strike iz ever taken lightly, and given they are striking to cause an impact then they've got the timing and target impact audience pretty right.
Not saying they're right, just that they're achieving their goals pretty well.

I'd actually be of the opinion that certain decisions to strike are taken lightly, however I haven't looked into the BA strikes enough to know whether that is the case on this occasion.

In my opinion then strikes should be conducted to have an impact on the management of an organisation. Most strikes these days have a far higher impact upon the service end users.

ie:tube passengers, rail passengers, RM customers, BA customers, etc.

In all but one of those instances then the people that the strikes mainly impact on have no other choice (how do you get around London easily without the tube? How do you get anywhere on the Thameslink line without the rail? How do you send a letter without RM?), and once the strikes are over and the workers still haven't achieved their aims then things go back to normal. Very little impact upon those the strikes are aimed at because they're safe in the knowledge that the customers have little, to no, other choice.

This, combined with the incredibly low turn outs there are for votes, are the reasons why modern strike action often does nothing other than make the customers of a service lose faith in the workers of a company and drop all kind of support for their cause.

I don't know what the answer is to achieve effective strike action, but the day a union figures out how to put pressure on management and maintain the support of the service users/customers is the day when striking will be effective again.

[jmc41]

RM one gets me too, the more they strike the more people use alternative methods and they put their major contracts with companies like amazon (who already uses HDNL amongst others) at risk. Which will lead to yet more redundancies.

Personally I won't be looking at BA for any flights in the future, both because of cancelling my one flight, and this 12 day strike complaning they are the best treated airline staff in the country. You want to complain, check our RyanAir, even their pilots have to pay for water on board.

[Will]

Bunch of tossers. Either way it's not going to mess up my holiday as we have contingency plans. But what a stupid thing to do. Clearly the union are greedy selfish ****s with no care for anyone else but themselves. I think they're likely to stand down but even if they don't I hope they all lose their jobs, and/or that BA outsource just to rub their noses in it.

Now I remember why I don't fly with BA anyway, rubbish airline - unfortunately this wasn't my decision.

[Streeteh]

I spoke to my mum about this (project manager at BA for years now and very happy in her job), she pointed me in the direction of a few articles and told me a few facts that shocked me frankly. For example, BA air cabin crew get paid nearly double that of the average salary among all airlines, yet they're striking?

BA used to outstrip the minimum required number of staff for safety by a massive margin, all they've done is cut the number of staff down to equal other high-end airlines (but still exceed the minimum required for safety) but will continue to pay them lots more than most other airlines. As a result they want to strike.

Spoilt gits imo. I wouldn't be shocked if BA ended up as another company killed by unions.

[Stan_Lite]

Are these people stupid?

They are planning on effectively shutting down the company they work for, for 12 days at a busy time of year - a company which is already losing money.

I'm not anti union - I went on marches in support of the miners in the 80s. If people are being treated unfairly then I'm all in favour of industrial action in order to force the employer's hands. From what I have read so far (both here and other places), BA cabin crew are among the best paid and best treated in the industry.

It looks to me like a company suffering losses have cleared out excess staff and tightened their belts in order to remain competitive - action which, whilst regrettable is necessary and justified.

From what I've been reading, much of the blame rests with BASSA (British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association). Apparently, they refused to negotiate with BA over the cost cuts. Hardly the actions of a responsible organisation.

[Desmo]

All I've heard from the union is that they had negotiated cuts to the tune of something like £40M so they've done their bit. Not much help when BA say they need to save £120M.

[Garp]

Originally Posted by Stan_Lite

From what I've been reading, much of the blame rests with BASSA (British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association). Apparently, they refused to negotiate with BA over the cost cuts. Hardly the actions of a responsible organisation.

The unions here have been doing similar stupid things.

This state is running on a deficit at the moment (like a number of them) primarily due to the global depression which has drastically cut tourism. The board of education is suffering similar problems for whatever reason. Redundancy was on the books and the unions kicked up a huge fuss. Instead of trying to work with the governor to help balance the books all they did was argue against the redundancies. The governor then laid it clearly on the line as they weren't prepared to help:
Furlough or Redundancy.

The union even wasted tax payers money by taking the governor to court over the redundancy plan, making the situation worse.

The union leadership chose Furloughs in the end (didn't even go to a vote). So instead of having a small number of redundancies, we've got state workers having random days off unpaid. All state workers, though not all at the same time.

Same thing happened in the education sector, instead of accepting that a smaller number of teachers were going to be disadvantaged by it, they settled on furloughs, so we've got 17 fridays over the space of this academic year during which there is no school, meaning parents all over the island are having to take days of work to look after their kids (thus harming the overall economy), plus a large number of teachers who suddenly find their pay packet no longer covers the bills. Genius!

If they'd gone the redundancy route the people who'd lose their jobs would find themselves able to claim redundancy pay for 6 months (comes from a different pot of money) during which they could be job seeking, and if necessary considering working on the mainland instead of here.

[Pebs]

Originally Posted by Will

Bunch of tossers. Either way it's not going to mess up my holiday as we have contingency plans. But what a stupid thing to do. Clearly the union are greedy selfish ****s with no care for anyone else but themselves. I think they're likely to stand down but even if they don't I hope they all lose their jobs, and/or that BA outsource just to rub their noses in it.

Now I remember why I don't fly with BA anyway, rubbish airline - unfortunately this wasn't my decision.

Unions are there to benefit their members. Not really greedy selfish ****s, just doing their job distasteful as it may seem. And I disagree that it will have little effect on management....there's little worse than bad publicity.

I've no idea why I'm playing devils advocate here, I haveno opinion either way.

[Will]

Hmm, I don't know I agree that unions are there to be supportive to their members, but in this case, I don't understand the point of their arguments and their fuss. Sure they're doing their job, but not really along the lines of actually obtaining a decent result considering the current financial climate, BA's financial state, and furthermore, didn't BA and the unions agree that instead of making recessions earlier in the year/last year that they'd just have a pay freeze, and the union accepted this - why are they being so vitriolic towards the company? Why have they been so back handed in their dealings getting ex-employee votes added to the pot?

I'm not saying you're wrong Pebs, in fact you're entirely right in what you say, however I just think they're really out of touch with it all.

Oh it will affect management, as they have to deal with the mess. And you're bang on about bad publicity, however, how does this help the staff that work for BA? If they lose their jobs or BA needs to downsize significantly, what do they gain from it?

I'm not disagreeing, I'm just completely dumbfounded at their actions.