Marc Fraser

This is an issue that has been ongoing for a while now, and to be frank, it’s getting boring.

British Airways (BA) cabin crews are members of the Unite union, who keep balloting.  These are the issues that were balloted on this time:

1. Restoration of staff travel concessions
2. Settle all disciplinary cases related to the original strike
3. Recruitment and deployment of cabin crew on lower levels of pay, without agreement of the union

Let’s face it, the Unite union has done no favours to BA’s cabin crew – in fact, you can see from the above list that it has dug itself into a bigger hole with the addition of two items (1 & 2)!

The initial strike was called regarding cabin crew’s level of pay (lack of).  Frankly, I really can’t understand where they’re coming from.  All the statistics I’ve seen places BA’s cabin crew higher paid than the majority of others!  These people must understand that BA is a business and that it need to run at least break even – which BA currently isn’t doing, so offering more money really isn’t feasible.

The public is getting fed up of these strikes, and I’m sure so are BA.   These strikes have many consequences:

Cancellation of flights:

The cancellation of flights causes great disruption to paying passengers – they can’t get to where they need to, some people even missed family funerals due to this debacle.  The cancellation of flights also costs BA, in more ways than one.

Loss of earnings:

The strikes hurt BA in terms of income – if the flight isn’t running, they cannot charge passengers.  In fact, if BA isn’t running a flight, they often have to rebook passengers onto other carriers – often their competitors.

The last ‘round’ of strikes caused BA to ask available Flight Crew (pilots) to operate as cabin crew, at a reduced service.  This allowed BA to operate the flights, but not quite at the same level of service as usual.

Damage to brand:

These strikes also damaged BA’s brand image.   The stories were all over national news – people unable to make weddings, business meetings, funerals, etc.  Some people say “All publicity is good publicity”, but in this case it firmly isn’t good publicity!

All these things cost BA money, which really isn’t helping the union’s cause!  In fact, it’s doing the exact opposite – just imagine if the union was reasonable, perhaps the loss of this money could have been used for a pay-rise for BA staff?

I believe that Cabin Crew are now seeing this, with each further round of strikes, less cabin crew are turning out to vote.  I also believe that Unite union has misled its members badly.

For the sake of passengers – and BA’s brand – please get this issue resolved soon.  Both parties should get together, discuss their differences and reach a resolution.  Both parties need to be reasonable throughout this process (pointing firmly at Unite)!