Things not getting better at BA !

British Airways cabin crew 'to stage four-day strike'

British Airways cabin crew will strike for four days from 16 June as part of a pay dispute, sources tell the Press Association.
More follows...

http://news.sky.com/story/british-airwa ... e-10902444

Well with BA continued failure to reach an agreement with its cabin crew labor group it's only natural such industrial actions will continue.

Will this effect the crews at LHR or LGW or both ?

readytotaxi wrote:

Will this effect the crews at LHR or LGW or both ?

It affects just some of the crews at LHR, those in the Mixed Fleet crew group, but not those in the Eurofleet or World Wide crew groups.
LGW crews and LCY crews are unaffected, they're in other bargaining groups again.
Usual vague and inaccurate reporting.

For those who don't know, Eurofleet does only shorthaul work on A320 series and the few remaining 763s. WorldWide does longhaul and midhaul. These two fleets of crew are the longer-serving people, and you can see in the work they do the history of BA's creation by the merger of BEA and BOAC, though it is very unlikely anyone is left from before the merger. Mixed Fleet, as its name suggests, does a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul work, and consists of people hired this decade, or who have transferred from the other fleets for promotion to Customer Service Manager grade.

It appears the post-merger integration plan is still at sixes and sevens.

Well, now each alliance has their own repeat strike offenders in Europe-
Star: LH
Skyteam: AF
OneWorld: BA

The poor labor relations are unfortunate.

It's been 3-4 years since I've flown BA, but it was the first time where I actually felt like the level of service on a flight was clearly better than the competition. For the sake of those here who work for other airlines, I'm not by any means complaining about your efforts. I simply was really impressed with how hard BA attendants worked at being courteous and responsive, and how friendly and helpful they managed to stay right on through to the end of a long flight.

It would be disappointing to see cost pressures and contractual disputes lower BA's standards to middle-of-the-pack. They had a great thing going for them.

Management get the industrial relations they deserve, its that simple.

Titan airways will be deployed to assist no doubt with what ever they have available on them dates

What is deliciously ironic is that Mixed Fleet were introduced to, in effect, break BASSA. What goes around comes around.

The last strikes had virtually no impact. There'll most likely be a handful of tactical short-haul cancellations each day.

OA260 wrote:

Things not getting better at BA !

British Airways cabin crew 'to stage four-day strike'

British Airways cabin crew will strike for four days from 16 June as part of a pay dispute, sources tell the Press Association.

It would be nice if they could time their strike to coincide with the next major IT outage - you know, kill 2 birds with one stone. -ir

emiratesdriver wrote:

Management get the industrial relations they deserve, its that simple.

Two way street. Union employees love to hide behind the contract until it's in the company's favor.

jetblueguy22 wrote:

emiratesdriver wrote:

Management get the industrial relations they deserve, its that simple.

Two way street. Union employees love to hide behind the contract until it's in the company's favor.

Not in this case. BA has hired an LCC guy who is gutting the company.

Varsity1 wrote:

jetblueguy22 wrote:

emiratesdriver wrote:

Management get the industrial relations they deserve, its that simple.

Two way street. Union employees love to hide behind the contract until it's in the company's favor.

Not in this case. BA has hired an LCC guy who is gutting the company.

To remain competitive in a low cost market. It's a business that needs to be profitable to survive. Not everything is about screwing the worker.

If you can't treat your employees properly and still make money, we don't need you.

jetblueguy22 wrote:

To remain competitive in a low cost market. It's a business that needs to be profitable to survive. Not everything is about screwing the worker.

The problem with British Airways is that the way the "new BA" is going, soon carriers like Norwegian (long haul) or Ryanair will be preferable and more competitive (delays, cancellations, customer service, product..). This reminds me of the US3 years ago when Southwest or JetBlue ate their cake because customers preferred those new carriers.

I really don't understand what IAG is thinking about. It is crystal clear what is going to happen. BA going downhill and 2 years from now they will move Alex Cruz somewhere else and will put someone in his position (maybe someone who "turned around" Iberia) to "make BA great again".

Just for clarity this is not about contracts that has already been agreed. This strike is about those who was on strike last time loosing their staff travel!

I think that key to change in the market place is how well you carry your people with you, customers and staff. No point making that long journey if you get to the other end and you are all by yourself. In this respect BA are failing badly. As others have said the cost cutting on service is awful, they react instead of being pro-active, I get the impression IAG do not know what BA's brand should be or stand for. Just my

Andy33 wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

Will this effect the crews at LHR or LGW or both ?

It affects just some of the crews at LHR, those in the Mixed Fleet crew group, but not those in the Eurofleet or World Wide crew groups.
LGW crews and LCY crews are unaffected, they're in other bargaining groups again.
Usual vague and inaccurate reporting.

For those who don't know, Eurofleet does only shorthaul work on A320 series and the few remaining 763s. WorldWide does longhaul and midhaul. These two fleets of crew are the longer-serving people, and you can see in the work they do the history of BA's creation by the merger of BEA and BOAC, though it is very unlikely anyone is left from before the merger. Mixed Fleet, as its name suggests, does a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul work, and consists of people hired this decade, or who have transferred from the other fleets for promotion to Customer Service Manager grade.

Eurofleet also do midhaul work.......currently BEY and AMM.

edina wrote:

Eurofleet also do midhaul work.......currently BEY and AMM.

Good point, so they do, on the remaining midhaul A321s. The other midhaul routes that are blessed with A321s are Mixed Fleet. Obviously Worldwide couldn't work them as none of them are qualified/current on A320 series aircraft.

The 4-day strike has been suspended.

http://www.turningleftforless.com/break ... 17-strike/

Guys a lot of you are chipping in with your world view on striking, with a certain US centric mentality. Let's focus on the specifics here.
Mixed Fleet was set up to have younger people doing an existing job at a fraction of the price. To do so, BA had to break the Left Wing mentality at cabin crew union, BASSA who were THE most intransigent of unions, even by Unite and Len McCluskey standards. The old dragons had warned against giving into a BA cut and slash mentality but I thought BA needed to pay market rate plus a % to have a chance of getting competitive again.
BA then hired a fleet of younger sexier people and promised them this. The reality did not stand up to that and turnover is too high leading to higher staff turnover, poorer service than expected due to lack of experience and young fresh eyes being as cynical and hacked off as the original legacy staff. If BA is a full service airline they need to pay a necessary premium to attract and hang onto the more talented staff. They're not interested in trying as Cruz and his senior staff only know how to cut costs.

Hence the strike because people can't actually afford to live near LHR on the salaries BA are now paying. And I say this as someone who condemned the unions at BA for years but on this matter, they're desperate people and absolutely within their rights to try. Scoff and sneer all you like but these guys have been screwed over badly. There's a reason BA's "To Fly, To Serve" motto only came back briefly, it's barely accurate!

skipness1E wrote:

Guys a lot of you are chipping in with your world view on striking, with a certain US centric mentality. Let's focus on the specifics here.
Mixed Fleet was set up to have younger people doing an existing job at a fraction of the price. To do so, BA had to break the Left Wing mentality at cabin crew union, BASSA who were THE most intransigent of unions, even by Unite and Len McCluskey standards. The old dragons had warned against giving into a BA cut and slash mentality but I thought BA needed to pay market rate plus a % to have a chance of getting competitive again.
BA then hired a fleet of younger sexier people and promised them this. The reality did not stand up to that and turnover is too high leading to higher staff turnover, poorer service than expected due to lack of experience and young fresh eyes being as cynical and hacked off as the original legacy staff. If BA is a full service airline they need to pay a necessary premium to attract and hang onto the more talented staff. They're not interested in trying as Cruz and his senior staff only know how to cut costs.

Hence the strike because people can't actually afford to live near LHR on the salaries BA are now paying. And I say this as someone who condemned the unions at BA for years but on this matter, they're desperate people and absolutely within their rights to try. Scoff and sneer all you like but these guys have been screwed over badly. There's a reason BA's "To Fly, To Serve" motto only came back briefly, it's barely accurate!

100% on the ball.....
Well said

Here is an update.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40305008

"British Airways cabin crew are to stage a two-week strike from 1 July, the Unite union has said, in a long-running dispute over pay and benefits.
Unite said BA had refused to accept its final offer on the issue of the "sanctioning" of striking cabin crew.
The union claims that crew who previously walked out have not had their bonuses or benefits, including free and discounted travel, restored."

Two weeks is a long time.