According to the BBC News website, British Airways has confirmed that cabin crew that took part in the Unite union’s 3 day strike action will lose their travel perks permanently. Currently, BA staff are given free or heavily discounted flights as a “non-contractural perk”, however all the cabin crew were advised before the strike action that if they took part, they would forfeit their travel perks.
The union has obviously immediately cried foul and is claiming that discounted travel is not just a perk but “custom and practice”. Well of course the union would say that.
The reality is that British Airways lost £401million in the 2009 financial year, and in the nine months to December 2009 in the current financial year, were already showing a loss of £342million. The three day action by strikers that’s just been completed is estimated to have cost BA £21million, and goodness only knows how much customer goodwill. If you book the holiday of a lifetime with British Airways and the flight gets cancelled, how likely are you to re-book with BA? Regardless, of the reason for the cancellation, I imagine not many people would trust the airline again. This situation will be made even worse with more proposed strike action this weekend.
Where does this get anybody? The cabin crew want more money, but BA doesn’t have any money to give them. All they are doing is running the business into the ground. Who benefits if British Airways goes bust? The cabin crew won’t get what they want – they won’t even have jobs at all. All the non-striking members of staff lose their jobs through no fault of their own. The nation loses an institution. The big cheeses at the top, have loads of cash in the bank and will simply move on to the next high paid job. The only people that get hurt are the workers themselves who are striking.
Should they lose their travel perks? Of course they should. They have a contract of employment, the terms of which they agreed to when they joined the company. If they refuse to come to work and are actively damaging their employer, why should the employer hand out perks? In my company there is no automatic entitlement to any kind of bonus or pay review. If the company has had a poor year and no money has been made, then there are no perks, bonuses or pay rises. That’s life. In that event we just have to each try harder to make the company a profitable enterprise the following year.
Why should there be rewards for failure?
Couldn’t agree more, I was going to write something along similar lines myself; but there’s no need now, you’ve written what I and a lot of other people were thinking.
My mum is flying with British Airways on Good Friday – thankfully not affected by strike action – but I doubt will ever fly with them again, these workers just don’t seem to get it. By tarnishing the reputation of BA as a company, not only are they losing their travel perks but ultimately, they are signing their own P45s in the long term.