The ongoing dispute between British Airways and the cabin crew union returned to the High Court in London today.
Unite is seeking a permanent injunction which would prevent the airline from imposing cost-cutting proposals - which came into effect before Christmas - that affect the number of crew on long-haul flights from Heathrow.
BA believes it is within its rights to reduce the number of crew onboard its Worldwide and Eurofleet services.
But the union claims any change would breach employee contracts which were previously agreed between the company and employee representatives.
The Press Association reported the John Hendry QC will present 10 test cases which are "representative" of 5,400 claimants who are among the 13,400 crew employed by BA.
The QC was reported as saying: "This is not an action which is intended to seek some sort of collective enforcement of the relevant terms. These are individual employees, each of whom seeks the enforcement of his or her individual terms, and the relevant terms are the number of crew he or she has to work with on any particular flight."
The case is expected to last for five days.
Unite is re-balloting its 12,000 cabin crew members at BA for industrial action over the row, with the result due on February 22.
Meanwhile, this Friday BA is expected to report heavy losses for the fourth financial quarter of 2009.
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BA CC Dispute
One must be very niave to assume that BA is on the verge of collapse. BA has plenty of money in the bank to see it not just through this recession but through any future event which may take it down a peg.
The dispute with CC has very little to do with cabin crew compliments (and certainly nothing to do with pay) and changes to CSD working agreements. It is about the fact that the management IMPOSED changes on its employees without discussions. This dispute is about posturing on the managements part, ripping apart its long serving employees contracts and basically making the statement that "We rule this airline, we can do what we like, no one can get in our way and democracy does not matter a damn!".
The very fact that a company CEO is allowing one group of employees undermine another group by allowing them to train up for the position and work that role in order to undermine them is disguisting and immoral. The same CEO went to the press and LIED to you and me about their salaries! This is also immoral and just plain wrong.
This is the same management that is allowing the company get fined for illegal price fixing, refuses to train its employees in order to run a new facility (T5...remember that people, wasnt very long ago) and has a number of its management members being investigated for creating cartels.
The unions have made some serious mistakes and errors but by and large they are still representing the staff, the people who actually run that airline on a day to day basis, the people who deal with you and provide you the service. They are being attacked by this faceless bean counters, threatened day in and day out (and in serious matters) with removal of T&Cs.
And most importantly, this dispute is about the fact that BA wish to phase out ALL current 13000 cabin crew over the next few years. Some of these people have been employed with the organisation since BOAC/BEA days and have given their entire working lives to the company. BA wants them replaced with new contract crew who will not be paid enough to meet your expectations of the "Premium" brand (laughable as so much has been removed onboard already that the whole "premium" thing is just a joke!). All the old crew will eventually have no choice but to sign up to the new contract as they will not be trained up for new aircraft fleets or be considered for megre promotions.
The business community and general travelling public really need to wake up and smell the lack of coffee onboard BA flights and realise that this management regime are not here to benefit BA. They want to establish a cheap and nasty airline playing on the old BA brand. They want to undervalue your custom through the years and cause untold hardship to its employees.
Please look with your eyes and see what is happening here.
BA/Unite dispute returns to the High Court
The union needs to wake up and smell the coffee. They are fighting to protect the odd few jobs from an airline that is at the brink of collapse and in the process will cause the loss of 13,400 jobs and many more!! They also need to wizen up to the general business backdrop. We are amidst one of the worst unemployment and business collapse figures in the history of this country and the only way out is to cause little pain to a few for the larger good.
By the way, I was a casualty of the process so its not plain words from the white castle... I'm in the thick of things and cannot kid myself to believe what the unions are asking for, is what they would do if this was their own company! It reasons like these that give unions a bad name and hence more and more people don’t bother joining one! What a shame…
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