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”
Jonathon James
Cv
When you join a company, you sign a contract of employment that lays down the terms and conditions. Outside of that contract there may be general agreements on working practices etc, that have been agreed between management and labour, but they are not contractually binding. So if a company wishes to vary these agreements, it is perfectly at liberty to do so. Of course, it runs the risk that labour may not agree to the changes, however, it should be noted that this does not constitute a variation to the terms and conditions of employment.
From where I stand it is obvious that the nub of this dispute centred originally around making the on board supervisors get out of their dens and work alongside their teams. This was the direct effect of the reduction in manning levels. It only affected Heathrow based cabin crew as the Gatwick based crews were working along these lines already. Now it is surely coincidental that the bulk of the BASSA branch executive are supervisors. There was absolutely no change for the rest of the cabin crew.
At the same time, BA seem to have been keen to reduce their cabin crew costs, which, according to CAA stats, are the highest in the UK. They look like achieving this by recruiting new cabin crew on a lower starting salary and with different allowances. It is this action which seems to be worrying some cabin crew. The problem for cabin crew is that they have always had a low basic pay, but have topped up their salary with allowances and additional payments. This is not unusual in the airline industry. The company says it will give the cabin crew an allowance of £x for an evening meal away from base. The cabin crew endeavour to spend less than this and pocket the difference. On some routes the difference is substantial. As more new staff join cabin crew on the lower salary level, they will be deployed on routes that were hitherto crewed by older contract staff. Net effect is that the older staff see the degree of ‘bunce’ from the difference between allowance and actuals reduce. Moreover, they also lose the discretionary payments, hence the statements about loss of earnings.
What we are seeing is a group of workers suddenly become aware of the very precarious nature of the basis of their earnings. It is no different to the shift worker who bases his/her lifestyle on always being able to pick up premiums for working night shifts and overtime. Fine whilst these are available, but when the company is forced to reduce production it can have dire effects on them.
One would have expected a forward looking union to have identified this as a potential pitfall and to have worked to secure a greater proportion of members income as consolidated pay, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Just as a company gets the union relations it deserves, so do the members get the union they deserve. I suggest that it is high time that the membership took their leaders to task.
Rum
Mr Jonathon James,
point 1,cabin crew do not agree to these imposed changes.
2. The direct effect of reducing manpower is to increase workload-for all the crew.
3. Discretionary payments- Also known as overtime.
4.The company is reducing pay not production.
5.We did consolidate some of our pay. Thank goodness.
Crew are being victimised.
Punished for being anywhere near Terminal 5 or Airport Hotels during strike days.
Barney
Jonathon (Waterworld) James – ok, if you want to play with CAA statistics….
Another BIG part of BA’s problem is that they have the highest number of non-productive back-office staff of any UK airline. That figure has NOT been marginally reduced since the 400 managers left on severance a couple of years ago (with a few coming back as highly paid ‘consultants’ I may add…!).
BA has been over-staffed for years – ever since the 1974 merger between BEA and BOAC, only once has any attempt been made to rationalise the staffing issue – when a consultant, Michael Levin, was employed from the States (travelling over on a Monday on Concorde, returning home the same way for the weekend…) to trawl through the HQ building getting rid of surplus people. Successive BA management teams have been weak in addressing that problem ever since 1974, what the airline (or any hotel or restaurant for that matter) doesn’t need is to reduce skilled front-line staff or reduce the content of ‘the product’ which BA have been doing in the last few years. It’s a simple trade-off …. for example, on BA’s 747 aircraft there have never been more than 16 cabin crew. Far eastern and middle eastern airlines have operated the same aircraft with up to 24 cabin crew, the equation is simple, the more crew you have onboard the more that can be done for your customers – cut back the crew and less will be done.
Mr James, you have one thing correct, BA’s cabin crew have always had a low basic salary (compared to similar European airlines such as Lufthansa and Air France) topped up with a variety of allowances. For mortgage quotation purposes BA have always added ALL the figures together, so they concur that the cabin crew salary package is made up of basic salary PLUS an average amount of the variable allowances. So, by removing 20% of the allowances from their cabin crew (that’s the net effect of the ‘new fleet’ crew operating the long range routes instead of the existing full time crew) BA’s senior cabin crew (ie those employed before late 2010) on the old contract will be losing 20% of the salary package that BA are happy to quote as their total salary….. Are you hearing the bells ringing yet?
How many of the people on this forum would be happy for that to happen to them, especially when your trade union offered the company temporary agreement changes resulting in cost savings of £120m per year whilst the company remained in ‘financial trouble’? Is that the workings of a ‘militant’ looking-for-trouble trade union, or one that is aware of the potential problem, which they want to try to solve, but guess that the figures may have been enhanced by a management team who have regularly increased their own salary/benefit packages despite losing hundreds of millions of pounds through illegal activities and gross incompetance?
Come on Jonathon, look around you as you drink your lattes or shop at Waitrose in Waterworld (yes folks, the hard working ‘suits’ of BA’s HQ building have their very own in-house branch of Waitrose to shop at …. during company time no doubt!). Smell the coffee yet Jonathon?
When Willie-boy has finished with the cabin crew (some hope from what I hear on the grapevine!) do you think he’ll sit back or will he want more from other groups of staff? More than likely and all those ‘volunteers’ who have been happily playing at being cabin crew may suddenly find that they have not been missed from their day jobs and they may well be ‘invited’ to vacate the premises in the near future when they find that they haven’t been missed whilst they’ve been away from their desks….
One final comment – BASSA members are happy with their leadership (3 of whom have been sacked by the way – on very spurious charges indeed – watch this space when the cases hit the employment tribunals!) and their leaders represent the views of the members….. over 1000 of whom attended the Branch meeting last Monday, witnessed by the General Secretary of Unite who was in attendance and gave his Union’s full support to BASSA, its committee and its members.
Paula
Anyone who compares us to sailors or the army are missing the point, yes cabin crew signed up for unusual working hours etc, which isnt the issue, the issue is Ba cabin crew only want what they signed up for, nothing more and with compromise a bit less!! The comments regarding free holidays are totally ridiculous staff travel is standby air travel and they are complaining that it was taken away and not returned in full for taking part in a LEGAL strike.
Mr. Sensible
What British Airways and the right fail to understand is that this kind of anti-union rhetoric brings us no closer to what we all want; a sollution to the disagreement and no disruption for passengers.
The best outcome for all sides is for union and management to reach a nigociated settlement.