British Airways cabin crew vote for Christmas strike

it makes we wonder if workers have any rights left at all .It seems to me that reguardless of what workers think about new employment practices they will be ignored ,given the size of the vote for strike action then there is obviously something wrong at BA and if the work force feel that strong they should just walk out anyway and there wont be that much BA could do about it

Originally Posted by LondonRoad

Walsh is pinning all his hopes on a merger with Iberia. Once Iberia have a look at the books and see how deep the hole in the pension fund is they may well just walk away from the proposal. If they don't walk away it will be a marriage in which BA will be the weaker partner. BA will exist in name for a while in much the same way as Abbey National did but in reality it's a British institution that will be lost forever. Great victory eh

If this happens it will be a institution lost partly because of the Unions. The truth is, compared to other airlines, they had one of the best salary packages for staff. I don't see how giving them even more would 'save' BA.

Originally Posted by Damien

If this happens it will be a institution lost partly because of the Unions. The truth is, compared to other airlines, they had one of the best salary packages for staff. I don't see how giving them even more would 'save' BA.

i think the strike was called because BA want to impose a new contract on staff with different working practices ,i don't think it has a lot to do with money

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by Damien

If this happens it will be a institution lost partly because of the Unions. The truth is, compared to other airlines, they had one of the best salary packages for staff. I don't see how giving them even more would 'save' BA.

You won't find anywhere in my posts a suggestion that anybody should be given more money. The only tactic Walsh brought to the job when he became CEO was bullying and attacking staff terms and conditions. He has repeatedly stated that you don't get anywhere negotiating. This is the attitude of a previous era. During his time at Aer Lingus he made quite a few costly blunders while dealing with union. His strategy then was to take Aer lingus to the point where a management buyout, led by him, was the only viable option. Fortunately the Irish politicians finally saw through him.

He provoked the Gate gourmet dispute which cost BA millions, he oversaw the T5 fiasco and is now hellbent on being the CEO of a merged BA/Iberia airline. There was much made by the supportive press of him forgoing his bonus during the T5 fiasco, I didn't notice any reporting of the £1 million pound "additional payments" he received.

The only way for BA to survive is to get rid of this numpty and install mangagement who are willing to bring a strategy that is for the benefit of BA, not the CEO.

[Charlie_Bubble]

Originally Posted by Sirius

So i wonder did the union tell there staff how long and when the strike would be . ????

No, they didn't. Derek Simpson was on five live last night right after the announcement. When Peter Allen asked him if they'd told the BA staff how long and when the strike was to be before the ballot, Simpson told him to find out how a union works.

Originally Posted by Charlie_Bubble

No, they didn't. Derek Simpson was on five live last night right after the announcement. When Peter Allen asked him if they'd told the BA staff how long and when the strike was to be before the ballot, Simpson told him to find out how a union works.

i am sure that the details of how long a strike is going to last and when it takes place has to be ironed out before the ballot .If people say they didn't know how long the strike was on for or when it would take place then they are talking out their backside

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by martyh

i am sure that the details of how long a strike is going to last and when it takes place has to be ironed out before the ballot .If people say they didn't know how long the strike was on for or when it would take place then they are talking out their backside

Quite right. Who would blindly put an X in a box without knowing the possible consequences. The press will find some idiots who claim this but it isn't representative.

Originally Posted by LondonRoad

Quite right. Who would blindly put an X in a box without knowing the possible consequences. The press will find some idiots who claim this but it isn't representative.

well i've just checked my big book of strike rules and it states that any action voted on must commence within 4 weeks of the ballot or the ballot is invalid
it also states that the employer must be notified of how many people and who they are and when they will be implementing any action before the ballot takes place

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by martyh

well i've just checked my big book of strike rules and it states that any action voted on must commence within 4 weeks of the ballot or the ballot is invalid
it also states that the employer must be notified of how many people and who they are and when they will be implementing any action before the ballot takes place

This is what makes the High court decision so undemocratic. There is a fair bit of time passes between informing the employer of the ballot process, the ballot, the result and then the industrial action.

In that time there will always be some people who receives a ballot paper who are not entitled to vote. The decision yesterday was about a few hundred people who no matter how the voted wouldn't have affected the overall outcome.

In the future, if there is a much closer ballot, does the employer only have to find one or two people who shouldn't have voted to run to the High Court to force the union to start the process again. Bad precedent

Originally Posted by LondonRoad

This is what makes the High court decision so undemocratic. There is a fair bit of time passes between informing the employer of the ballot process, the ballot, the result and then the industrial action.

In that time there will always be some people who receives a ballot paper who are not entitled to vote. The decision yesterday was about a few hundred people who no matter how the voted wouldn't have affected the overall outcome.

In the future, if there is a much closer ballot, does the employer only have to find one or two people who shouldn't have voted to run to the High Court to force the union to start the process again. Bad precedent

Hang on, hang on ... I think it's about time we tempered all this feverish commentary with a little learned opinion. Here's a few wide words from an industrial relations lawyer, offered to the BBC before the outcome of the legal challenge was announced:

Marc Meryon, industrial relations partner at the law firm Bircham Dyson Bell, said BA's case rested on whether Unite took enough care in ruling ex-employees out of the ballot. "The outcome of the case will depend on how many people they have balloted who have left, and how long ago they left," he said.
"If the union has been balloting people who left the company six or nine months ago… then the company will be saying that it was reasonable to expect the union to have got it right and excluded them [from the ballot].
"But if they are complaining about people who left within the last month or two then it's much more difficult to show that the union was at fault."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8414306.stm

As is often the way in these sorts of cases, there's the critical word reasonable. What you're suggesting as the future nightmare scenario simply is not reasonable. No judge is going to halt a strike just because an employer can find a small handful of people who shouldn't have been balloted. For BA to have won this, there must have been a substantial number of people who were not entitled to vote, and there must have been some good evidence that Unite didn't bother to take reasonable steps to avoid balloting them.

---------- Post added at 13:29 ---------- Previous post was at 13:27 ----------

Originally Posted by papa smurf

and all it cost was democracy what a bargain .

What's so democratic about a trade union that's prepared to flout the law in order to get its way? The laws on how strikes are called are there to prevent unions abusing their power and were put there by a democratically-elected parliament.

Originally Posted by Chris

Hang on, hang on ... I think it's about time we tempered all this feverish commentary with a little learned opinion. Here's a few wide words from an industrial relations lawyer, offered to the BBC before the outcome of the legal challenge was announced:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8414306.stm

As is often the way in these sorts of cases, there's the critical word reasonable. What you're suggesting as the future nightmare scenario simply is not reasonable. No judge is going to halt a strike just because an employer can find a small handful of people who shouldn't have been balloted. For BA to have won this, there must have been a substantial number of people who were not entitled to vote, and there must have been some good evidence that Unite didn't bother to take reasonable steps to avoid balloting them.

---------- Post added at 13:29 ---------- Previous post was at 13:27 ----------



What's so democratic about a trade union that's prepared to flout the law in order to get its way? The laws on how strikes are called are there to prevent unions abusing their power and were put there by a democratically-elected parliament.

thats the problem the word REASONABLE is used far to much in employment law and can be very vague also it does depend on a judge to rule on what is resonable and what's not .I understood that some of the people ruled invalid to vote were people on voluntary unpaid leave or voluntary redundancy (serving notive)surely these people technically still work for BA and so should have been allowed to vote

[LondonRoad]

BA complained about ballot papers that were sent to people who had already left and those who were in the process of leaving... These were all people who had gone or were going under the VR scheme. All within the last 6 months, most more recent .

I've seen various figure quoted for those not entitled to vote but there seems to be a consensus that it was in the region of 800 - 1000.

The membership figures of most trade unions is usually out of date because the vast majority of members pay through their wages. The Union therefore depends on the Employers to inform them of leavers, sickness etc, through their payroll process. Some employers do this monthly, others quarterly, a few even less frequently. I don't know how regular BA send returns to Unite but a balloting process that started at the end of October would have been using figures from further back than even that.

I totally agree with the expert you quoted on what is reasonable. The high court judge didn't.

The undemocratic aspect is that even if every single ballot paper that was incorrectly issued was counted as no vote, there would still be an overwhelming majority voting for industrial action.

Originally Posted by LondonRoad

BA complained about ballot papers that were sent to people who had already left and those who were in the process of leaving... These were all people who had gone or were going under the VR scheme. All within the last 6 months, most more recent .

surely anybody in the process of leaving through a VR scheme still works for the company and therefore should vote

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by martyh

surely anybody in the process of leaving through a VR scheme still works for the company and therefore should vote

That was the phrase used by BA in the high court documents. I'm assuming these are people that will have left before the strike starts, or in between ballot papers being issued and their employment terminating, but how the hell the union are supposed to know that.

This was a secret ballot so nobody actually knows if any of these people actually voted.

[Charlie_Bubble]

Originally Posted by martyh

i am sure that the details of how long a strike is going to last and when it takes place has to be ironed out before the ballot .If people say they didn't know how long the strike was on for or when it would take place then they are talking out their backside

The details of how long and what dates were not known when the vote took place, this is why some members of staff are ok about it being cancelled now, because they know the impact it would have had over Christmas. Let's face it, they have little public support as it is, without TV pictures of people stranded in far away places over the Christmas period.