It is easy to forget that the British Airways cabin crew dispute is about real people's lives; here, Left Foot Forward presents the testimony of a BA employee.
The British Airways dispute is often portrayed as a battle of wills between management and union bosses, glossing over the fact that people’s livelihoods and lives are at stake. On the day that union members meet for the first time this year, ahead of the next strike ballot which closes on 21 January, we hear from a longtime BA employee on the effect on their life; they have asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals
Cabin crew are a disparate workforce varying enormously in terms of age, race, class and nationality. We don’t know each other. We meet each other for the first time at the pre-flight briefing and after the trip, largely never see each other again. For many of us, attending a union meeting is the first political action we have ever taken. And British Airways cannot understand why 91% of the workforce is unionised, why at every ballot, between 81% and 92% vote to strike and how the union managed to realise that unprecedented degree of solidarity.
There is one simple answer: A company gets the union it deserves.
So for a management fixated on its own cabin crew being the overpaid, under worked, indolent, thieving entity that stands between it and an even greater increase to their personal bonuses and share options, there is also one simple answer: destroy the union.
In pursuit of this quest, British Airways has engaged thoroughly in every principle of union busting, including the creation of a climate of fear among the workforce in an attempt to undermine confidence in the union’s power and its ability to protect and to chip away at the workers’ resolve.
BA created a secret intelligence unit with the specific remit of gathering evidence against striking cabin crew and have actively encouraged staff to inform. They conduct covert surveillance and having dispensed with normal policies and procedures, threaten, suspend and dismiss crew in unprecedented numbers with apparent impunity.
I was one of the suspended cabin crew but am now sacked. I am a single parent, have a good degree and have worked for them for more than ten years. I earned about £27,000 per year. I love my job and always have.
Some of the very best days of my life have been spent on trips with crew who though a bunch of strangers are among the warmest, most dynamic, creative and caring people I have ever known. I may not have always been there for the school play and have had to juggle madly like all working parents with the added difficulty of being away for days on end and doing it all through a haze of chronic jetlag. But my working for the airline has afforded me and my family some incredible experiences.
I have always enjoyed the actual work; the meeting the passengers and making a difference to them, however small. I care about them. I respect them. And it is because of this that I believe in my union’s aims and actions.
Being sacked from BA means not just the loss of my livelihood but also my entire way of life. I don’t know who I am if I am not BA cabin crew. And being sacked is one thing, but being sacked on trumped up charges heard by a kangaroo court as a pawn in a political game is quite another.
It’s actually not, not yet anyway, the how am I going to pay my mortgage that keeps me awake at night. It’s the lies and the injustice and the powerlessness. It’s the moral outrage that I play through my brain on a continuous loop all day and night as though if I run it once more the outcome might be different.
In taking on BA, we cabin crew take on the British anti-union labour laws and the courts, we take on union busters and one of the biggest legal firms in the world, Baker McKenzie. In continuing the fight we expose ourselves to the unbridled vitriol of a largely right-wing press. Our own management will undoubtedly continue removing benefits, making threats and stepping up their campaign of dismissing those who do not yield to their brave new world order.
Prior to this dispute, BA cabin crew may not have been political animals. We are now.
96 Responses to “The BA cabin crew dispute: The view from the shop floor”
W.W
I honestly beleive that all the talk and ill feeling bred through Mr Walsh BLURRED VISION is a big red herring, from the use of the financial downturn in his spin on cost saving for ‘his’ comapany’s salvation to the FUEL FIXING fiasco (mps have gone to prison for similar but the cheif exec never bites the bullet! just his pupetiers)…What were seeing is far worse! this is a total remodelling of a business in this case an airline. I liken it to boarding school or any other institution you may wish to imagine. The institution beleives they are the law and the workforce are subservient and able to be manipulated. In this case through Walsh’s management by fear, intimidation and bullying. Unfortunately some of the customer base he has won over are of a similar mindset and detrimental to the airline equally. In a nut shell he was brought in to do a job to help the airline and streamline yes, but while he has grown in his role and not in his stature he has become the bully that all small people at boarding school seem to become>>> VOTE YES CABIN CREW>>
W.W
It will also be very interesting to see what Mr Underpants will do at the next strike when his job at Iberia is on the line>>> I think he may well curve ball it to the next saviour of THE WORLDS FAVOURITE AIRLINE>>>>
Barney
Different Peter (glad you’re not the one working at BA’s HQ at Waterworld – at least you appear to live in the real world!)…. ALL of the Agreements that BA’s cabin crew have worked to have been freely negotiated between the company and the trade unions. There has been no coercion by either side, history shows that both sides at various times in the past have been flexible in order to reach an agreement which has been signed by both parties and logged at the National Joint Council for Civil Aviation.
The problem is that Willie-boy has come along from screwing Aer Lingus to the wall and has decided that he is unilaterally ripping up these agreements – without having the bottle to actually come out and say so. What would YOU do if your employer did that to you? BA’s cabin crew are a disparate force who don’t have regular day to day contact with their manager therefore they delegate their negotiations in dealing with the company to their trade union who act on their behalf under instructions given to them by the membership at union meetings and by secret postal ballots. The only time a gun has been held to any head within BA is now – with Walsh unilaterally ripping up previously jointly made agreements.
By the way, NONE of BA’s other staff have been picked on and had such vast changes imposed upon them – though no doubt they will be next in line should Walsh win his battle with BASSA …. food for thought there all those of you working in Waterworld!
Peter, if you think it’s such an amazing deal to have a 15-20% salary reduction imposed upon you (as well as giving the company the flexibility to move you to any job within the company at their whim or transfer you to any subsidiary company anywhere in the world – read the small print!) then I hope that your boss does the same to you in the near future – perhaps then you will realise just what this long ongoing dispute is really about.
The devil really is in the detail, problem is the detail is almost unintelligible to anyone outside of the company, which is probably what Walsh relies upon. 10,000 basically non-militant people are not taking this long term action for fun you know…..
Jonathon James
When will some people realise that there are lot of us who do not work for BA, who look at this dispute utter amazement. The pro-union rhetoric here seems to be of the view that BA was not in any real difficulty financially and that it has used an economic downturn to attempt to break the largest union in the UK.
Take a step back and look at that statement very carefully. There has been an economic downturn. Airlines are dependant on businesses and leisure travellers having money to pay for seats. If these businesses and leisure travellers have less money, they won’t be flying as much. So the airlines won’t make as much money. If the airlines cannot reduce their costs they will start to make losses. Airlines need to be able to borrow money in order to buy new aircraft etc. Banks will not lend money unless they are pretty certain of getting it back and will be wary of lending to companies who are making losses.
Now. Given that BA posted significant losses in 2009, don’t the union minded folk on here think that maybe the company was in just a slight financial bind ?
Next. Unite has around 1.5 million members. I suspect that it has a very healthy balance sheet – it has been able to fund the Labour Party to the tune of several million pounds. Thus it would take an awful lot of financial muscle to be able to break it. Do BA have that financial muscle ? Moreover, BA has, according to the latest company report, some 40,000 employees. It operates collective bargaining with a number of unions – Unite, GMB, BALPA etc. If the company were intent on union busting, why would it take on the union that represents the largest proportion of its workforce ? Surely it would be easier to tackle one of the smaller groups first. Whilst the union folk digest that, let me ask why, given that the company operates a number of collective bargaining agreements, would it want to remove the very groups it deals with. If BA staff were all non-unionised, the company would have to deal with every one of its 40,000 employees on an individual basis. That would be a huge overhead.
From a purely logical standpoint, the union busting allegation seems to be a complete myth. It might be different if the pro-union folk could put some unequivocal facts on the table. To date I have not seen any.
To say that cabin crew have been singled out is a gross misrepresentation. My understanding is that several years ago, the whole of the BA catering operation was sold off and now trades as Gate Gourmet. The company also made significant changes in working practices for ground crew when it moved in to T5.
That does not mean that BA management is entirely blameless. Clearly, the fact that cabin crew seem to feel that they should be exempt from any cost reductions is down to weak management in the past. The key problem seems to be that now BA management have taken a much tougher stance and the cabin crew unions have been taken by surprise. They were so used to getting their own way that they don’t know how to deal with a management that now wishes to manage the company. The biggest mistake the union made was in calling for strike action and then failing to get the rank and file support. The strike weapon is single use. If it fails to stop the company first time around, then repeated use is calculated to fail as well. If Unite are to reach a settlement in this dispute, they will need to find a different tactic. Maybe now is the time for them to put forward some fresh proposals rather than rely on BA coming up with offers.
Cv
BARNEY POINT 20 IS SO SPOT ON, ANYONE WITH SELFDIGNITY AND MORALS AT THE WORK PLACE SHOULD TAKE NOTICE OF BARNEY`S COMMENTS.
PETER!! POINT 6, PLEASE I URGE YOU TO GET YOUR FIGURES RIGHT BEFORE UNLEASHING WRONG MISLEADING INFORMATION, IT IS OFFICIAL THAT BA CREW OVER THE YEARS HAVE HAD LESS IN PERCENTAGE PAY INCREASES THAN ANY OTHER DEPARTMENTS WITHIN THE COMPANY!!!