BA strike - the other side of the story

Seeing that most UK based media have been ganging up on the striking BA airline crew members I thought it's fair enough to offer the other side a reasonably public voice. Here's a bit I picked up from the comments page of the Daily Torygraph. Spelling mistakes as in the original.

'I have worked for BA for 21 years, I am not a militant person and wear my BA uniform with pride. I feel compelled to post this because I am sick of hearing nothing but crew bashing from the media. After 21 years with British Airways my salary is 21,000 pounds a year, nothing close to the 56 thousand that is being reported on the news, whereas Mr Walsh recieves the highest salary of any CEO in the airline industry not to mention his generous bonuses and share options. British Airways is informing the press and public that 60% of flights are departing today, well let me explain why this is. British Airways operate many code share flights with other airlines, in other words, the flight is operated by another carrier with a BA flight number. British Airways is also operating a huge number of what we call "Ghost Flights" These are BA planes that are being flown without passengers or Cabin Crew to destination in order to collect passengers and bring them back to London and finally, all the BA flights operated by the wet lease aircraft are flying with a BA flight prefix so I guess with that information, BA will get many flights away today. The volenteer crew that Mr Walsh is using have not recieved the proper medical training that we recieved, infact an email was sent out by the company 2 weeks ago stating that these crew were not to deal onboard medial problems or emergencies, these should be left to the fully trained crew.
Over the past couple of years, BA have been hit very hard by enormous fines for our price fixing scandal, the Terminal 5 fiasco, incorrect fuel hedging, Cargo price fixing fines, the list goes on. These fines ammount to over 600 million pounds and contributed to our record losses. Mr Walsh has a record of destroying airlines, Aer Lingus being his legacy. He was thrown out by the Irish prime minister for selling of priceless works of art in order to keep the company affloat, only to then try and complet a hostile buy out with 2 colleagues. He was called "Nothing but a common Thief" by the Irish prime minister.
My Walsh has a history of bullying his emplyees too and BA is no exception. We are all scared by this man, we recieve nothing but a constant barage of threatening e-mails from him and his managers tellings us that if we don not report for work during this legal strike we will face severe punishment. As a cabin crew community we have offered to take a pay cut, not a pay rise as has been reported by so many media outlets. We want BA to succeed but Mr Walsh is hell bent on destroying our union, this was never about money. We have had to watch Mr Walsh destroy our company reputation by cutting corners and costs on our flights. We spend more time appologising for the lack of ammenities on our aircraft these days than acctually delivering the once world-class product that we were known for. Food and wine shortages onboard, an inflight entertainment system that was bought on the cheap and is substandard at the best of times. Please skynews, let the public know that cabin crew are not greedy money grabbing people, we know we have better terms and conditions than many of the other British airlines but we have been around longer and and offer a totally different style of service onboard our aircraft. We are truly sorry for spoiling the travelling plans of so many hard working people but in the grand scheme of things, this is our life, we have famillies to support, mortgages to pay and financial commitments the same as so many other people. We may be spoiling the travel plans of the public for the weekend, but this at the end of the day, is our liveleyhood.
Mr Walsh must be held accountable for this strike and hopefully the share holders will see this and vote him out very soon.'

Solidarity with BA cabin staff

UNITE, the union of the BA cabin staff have called a strike, lasting from December 22 to January 02. Hey, let me declare a conflict of interest. I am scheduled to fly on BA on December 23 from LHR to JFK. I was looking forward to catching up with secular friends in New York to get over the painful sickening sweetness that comes with Xmas. I was also looking forward to giving a talk on December 30 at the APA Eastern meeting in New York, and to a lively discussion about my paper (the joys of the academy).

Well, I may or may not get to New York, who knows. I can't rebook my flight, because it's a return leg, so in a sense I am on the road and can't easily change horses in the middle of the race (or so my booking agent, AA, told me - I had some hope they'd help me, being gold member [pun intended] and all). So, I am likely to be well and truly stuck in London unless BA and UNITE reach an agreement, or unless the UK Supreme Court forces UNITE to back down for the time being. I shall see.

What irks me about the public debate on this is the nasty response by the wider traveling (even the not traveling) public. There we hear stories about priests not being able to return to Africa (to do what, propagate the death penalty for gays in Uganda as they're wont to do? surely they're not doing anything really useful there anyway!), married couples not being able to go on a honeymoon in Florida (at least you won't be eaten by the crocs that are everywhere in that state), and so on and so forth. Some of the stories are truly sad, BUT, surely the point of a strike is to put pressure on your employer. What's the point of striking if nobody notices (us academics faces this problem just about all the time, especially in the context of strikes :-)? So, here's my first point: you can't blame cabin staff for striking at peak season, because this is the best time of the year to go on strike, from a strategic perspective.

BA and the sorry British public opinion on this matter also go on about their cabin staff being paid better than anywhere else in the industry. The company churns out press releases using their (arguably overpaid) inflight directors' long-haul salaries to show how well paid their cabin staff are. Of course, starting salaries for current flight attendants they're proposing now are a fraction of those directors' salaries! They're barely a living wage. Bizarrely the published opinion on the matter points out that Virgin Atlantic cabin staff already are being paid these miserable salaries for the hard work they're doing. What kind of argument is that? Since when has the lowest salary in the industry established what is reasonable? I kid you not, this is the level of public debate in this country!

Then there is people going on how miserable BA's service is. Well, for better or worse, I like the company's economy and premium economy better than that of many other carriers. Compared to Air Canada, for instance, BA's performance is way better. Admittedly, BA's long-haul business class is a bit of a joke (the in-flight service, not the seats). I would not ever fork out my own hard-earned cash for a seat in the far front of their planes, sorry to say.

Either way, good success to their cabin staff, don't let published public opinion in papers like the Daily (Hate) Mail drag you down! You're right to fight for better working conditions (or at least to prevent a further deterioration). I for one don't go on Virgin Atlantic anylonger because I know that their arguably superior service is paid for by greedy ol Richard Branson's miserable pay conditions for his staff.