BA - Turkeys voting for Christmas!

mystic_trev

British Airways cabin crew have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike in a dispute over job cuts and changes to staff contracts.

The strikes are set to begin on 22 December and run until 2 January. They are expected to cause significant disruption over the Christmas period.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8411214.stm

PolishBigSpender

Utter morons. Don't they realise that BA are struggling to survive, and are highly unlikely to make it out of this current economic climate as a standalone carrier?

Striking at Christmas is going to win them absolutely no support either - do they think people will be sympathetic if they can't get home for Christmas?

edinburgher

I am one of the aforementioned customers who have no sympathy.

While I'm sure that the stewards and stewardesses are very skilled at what they do, they earn more than me by about £4k and I studied for 5 years to get my professional job. Now they plan on stressing me out at Christmas to defend the culling of their (very) generous perks?

cavkc

I think it's disgraceful, hitting consumers who have scrimped and saved all year just so they can go away at Christmas. We fly long haul tomorrow, returning on 6th January, so hopefully we will miss it, although there could still of some fall out for our return journey.

What do they expect BA to do, they are losing money by the bucket-load and have to look at making cuts.

Also, their cabin crew earn approx DOUBLE what their counterparts at Virgin earn.

beaker141

Thats the problem with all the old nationalised unionised companies - Royal Mail are similar dinosaurs who struggle with change.

I imagine the BA crew will get what they want in the end - they have too much of a stranglehold over the airline, except they won't be happy with that, next year they will come with some other demands and the cycle starts again.

kegg_2

Sack the bloody lot of them and employ someone who is not so greedy. The earn twice as much as the virgin staff doing the exact same job which in reality is little more than being a waitress/waiter.
The need a reality check.

alanrowell

kegg wrote: »

The earn twice as much as the virgin staff doing the exact same job which in reality is little more than being a waitress/waiter.

Amazing how everyone quotes Virgin who are worse payers than even Ryanair. As I understand it the average pay for the low costs airlines runs around £20,000 pa - and that's for mainly short haul flights where people get to sleep in their own beds at night rather than half way around the world.

As for the strike - if over 90% of people vote for a strike that does suggest they are pretty miffed about something and that the blame for the situation doesn't just lie with the union especially when said union have offered to take 10% pay cuts

gingin_2

I am prepared to stand corrected but I'm not sure comparing the pay the BA staff get with Virgin is correct.

Different companies pay their flight crew different benefits on top of their basic pay. For example, I received a base salary but then on top of that was paid an hourly rate for every hour I worked - if I started work at 7am and landed at 3pm I got paid my base, plus an hourly rate and if I was in the USA for a week, I got paid from the hour I left the UK to the hour I arrived back. My take home salary was around 80% higher than my base salary. I don't think the media have grasped this.

Every company differs.

edinburgher

Amazing how everyone quotes Virgin who are worse payers than even Ryanair

That's just because the figure has been widely bandied about in the media. Still no news of what's actually happening to anyone's flight.

GH

edinburgher wrote: »

That's just because the figure has been widely bandied about in the media. Still no news of what's actually happening to anyone's flight.

Believe what you read in the media do you edinburgher? I assume you believe in Father Christmas as well. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

edinburgher

GH wrote: »

Believe what you read in the media do you edinburgher? I assume you believe in Father Christmas as well. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

If you bother to read the thread before being deciding to be a smartass, you'll notice that I never once quoted the £14k Virgin figure, or said that I believed it. I simply pointed out that it was likely that folk were mentioning it because it was being widely quoted in the newspapers.

At the end of the day my Christmas may be ruined as well as the holidays of thousands of others - go troll somewhere else if you can't show a little sympathy