Thetownend.com

I've bitten my tongue for too long now, and is starting to annoy me. Just get back to work you lazy gob-shites!

One of the wifes friends said it spot on...

'You think you've got low pay and awful working conditions, then think of all those dedicated soldiers in Afghanistan! They're not on strike!'

My Dad's wife is a purser and she has many friends who are also cabin crew. Every single person she knows didn't want to strike. Many of them also hate Unite. They also wanted to cross the picket line, but this just leads to a work environment that is near impossible to put up with.

My old man, who knows more about it than me, explained that it's nothing more than a load of dickwaving between the egos that are Willy Walsh and the twats up top in Unite. Apparently Unite have neither the interests of BA or it's staff in it's mind, but just alike to flex their muscles at Willy Walsh.

Think what your wife's friend says is stupid though. :)

I agree.

Especially as the cabin crew strike seems to be bsed on the fact they are asked to do a bit more work on a flight for the best pay and conditions in the industry. For fucks sake, you serve drinks and food. If you crash they you're pretty much fucked anyway so i dont see how it has anything to do with safety

I had more sympathy for the post office strikers, and thats really saying something.

The one thing I don't quite get, is that if Unite have as much influence in the Labour Party as the Daily Heil and co claim they do, why would they strike now, right before an election?

Willie Walsh is clearly a massive twunt, how he's kept his job I'll never quite know. That said, it seems unwise to strike considering the financial sitaution BA is in to start with.

 i'm on the side of the strikers. other peoples jobs are irrelivant

If they don't like it they should go work for another airline. Oh wait, they won't because they get paid the most of any airline.

They are kicking up a fuss because they'll have to work a bit harder, it has been established that BA have been overstaffing flights in comparison to other airlines, so the amount of additional work is hardly unmanageable. The other contractual issues are just tough shit, no matter what they are used to or expect.

People are flying with budget airlines now. Cost is more important than service, that argument doesn't stack up.

yeah they earn loads. £11 grand basic,now with more work and less benefits.

Fuck off is it. The average salary for BA cabin crew is something ridiculous like £30,000 when taking into account bonuses and expenses/allowances etc.

fuck off it is.i said basic

And free flights for family members don't forget....

Arriba you cant talk about basic - its an overall package that counts....

The reason their basic is low is because they get paid flight time etc.... - and their job is flying so they are going to get it !

And that Scottish twat Brown is so far up Unite's arse that he is too scared to do anything to try and help.......

Not any more.

Cabin crew don't get free flights to family members. They will often get discounted for immediate family in limited number and children below 23. Pilots do, but they're not striking. Also £30k might be something the papers like to throw around, but your everyday cabin crew member doesn't earn that. My Dad's wife is 43, has been with BA for ages and she's a purser, she earns about that.

the sun said it, so it must be true.

whats a purser???

something you keep your money in

Managing steward/stewardess. CSD > Purser > Steward/Stewardess. It's like a manager of a section of the plane who in turn is answerable to the Cabin services director.

Edited in case a family member somehow read this site! :)

So what are the basic salaries for other airlines? It's a question of market conditions. Don't go comparing to other industries otherwise the (what I also think is stupid) Soldiers argument is equally valid.

is comparing to other airlines fair too?
if that were the case, in any work related dispute employees would just be walked over in every walk of life.they get this, so you should too.dangerous ground is that i think.
people have contracts and certain things that go with it.if they see that getting attacked, then good on them for standing up to it.

this country is going backwards in terms of employees welfare and conditions.the recent, and current disputes with workforces will escalate i think.

But if the contract is excessive by industry standards (i.e. BA pays more and has more staff on flights than other airlines) when the company is losing money hand over fist then the logical step to take is to cut costs and bring BA in line with the industry standard.

The cabin crew arent being shit on, they had a great deal in the 1st place!

The crew seem to think that BA losing a fortune will carry on idefinatley and all will be well when in reality the whole company could go bust.

We live in a capitalist society, employee pay is determined by the labour market being supply and demand (the anomaly is minimum wage). If BA pays the going rate then I don't see why staff should stop working. If BA pays a disgustingly low rate then fair enough, but why work for them in the first place only to refuse to work if it's not good enough.

How do you determine if the rate is good or bad anyway? You compare it as close you can to something similar in that job market. A person who works in Waitrose may feel underpaid compared to Chartered Quantity Surveyor, but comparing to other supermarkets they may pay better (I don't know if that's the case just an example). Comparing job roles in similar businesses is the only reasonable way to go about it. That's not to say there should be an even playing field between companies, but it is a benchmark.

BA is going down the toilet and it cannot change the existing contracts so it's having to do what it can to cut costs other ways. Unfortunatley the non-contractual benefits is one of them. It could be the final nail in their coffin and a silly move if they didn't think strikes were a possibility. I wonder how much worse off BA will be as a result of these strikes. Redundancies later in the year?

Of course it is fair Arriba.

We have been here before on another thread a few months back.

Virgin Atlantic (one of BA's major competitors) don't go on strike, do they? I am pretty sure that their cabin staff are happy with their lot, otherwise they would leave and get a better job on another airline. BA staff only strike because the useless cunts in the union decide that they should and the staff have no option but to be members.

It is absolute bollocks, completely outdated, outmoded and I hope BA go down the shitter because of it. I will feel slightly sorry for the employees, but that was their choice to work for BA in the first place.

Oh and the country is not going backwards with employee conditions. It is called 'reality' when the economy has been put in a terminal dive because of your friends in the Palace of Westminster, then it hurts us all.

Alternatively BA staff could tell UNITE to fuck off and renounce the union completely. That I would love to see.

It might just save their jobs and the company.

Like a purse, only more so

I love a good strike - brings out the best in a person
fight or be fucked - it's your choice

I know most of what you write when it comes to politics is ill-informed bollocks but this one really pushes the fucking boat out.

Staff have no choice but to join Unite? What you're suggesting is a closed shop TT, which is BOLLOCKS! You've suggested that such things exist in the UK in a couple of threads now and I don't have fucking clue where you get the idea from.

And they're on strike because the Union decided they should be, strange because I thought that in a secret ballot with an 80% turnout there was an over 80% vote in favour of strike action.

Of course I could be wrong because I get all my news from sources that are inherently compromised like the BBC and the Daily Telegraph, rather than the "anarcho-capitalist" nut-job conspiracy theorist bloggers you prefer.

 :D

I'm going to book up for a romantic candlelit dinner for two and take you out for an evening.

Which flowers do you like best?

I'd be more inclined to agree with you, on this and many other points that you've made in the past, if you weren't so fucking aggresive. Get over yourself mate.

I'm with you on that jayohwassit. You don't need to be so loud and nasty mr. lumps. Your points generally make Talk Talk look like a bit of a special school without the anger bits.

I'm left leaning, if that is possible, but the BA strike is a joke.  Their basic is around top end, not hugely over the norm, but the perks are what make BAstand out.  The changes, though harsh, are not illegal, and as I understand it impact on non contractual terms - so BA has the option to remove them when the shit hits the fan as it clearly has.

It makes it worse when you consider the Union involved.  Unite is a contradiction in terms, a combination of two Unions who do not get on one iota -the two leaders (how can you have two?) don't even talk to each other.  They are generally the most politically motivated and internal fights spill into their actions.

Lumps, you may think it it hearsay but I personally know of someone who was seriously considering striking only because he was afraid of the actions of active members of the union.  I've seen and read reports of several strikes in recent years and I don't remember this previously being reported as widely as it has this time around. It may be unfounded, fear tactics, but people inside the organisation at the same level are in perceiving that and being provided with just enough aggresiveness to come to that conclusion.

I think this seriously runs thr risk of terminally damaging BA, which I actually think will be a good thing in the long run. They smack of an airline in the same mould as the traditional US transatlantic carriers, stuck in a time warp and unable to react to a changing market.  The fact that it has boiled over to where it is now just shows two things - the company and senior management is shit, the staff are so resistent to change they will gradually strangle the company to death.

The only Virgin company to have industrial action problems is the rail company, which is a legacy company from BR.  BA has amazing retention rates, yet has staff this angry - the two don't fit.  It's too cosy a number so even the unhappy people don't leave -that allows people to fester and angst grows and the company gets stuck in rut.

No it's true, i ind of alluded to it in earlier post. It's the only reason why my Dad's wife is striking and most of her friends. Simply fear. My Dad's wife wants to work, hates the Union and has no desire to strike, but crossing the picket makes your working life a living hell and you may as well forget driving to work because it will get your car vandalised.

She is properly, properly upset by the whole debacle.

Which is what I was alluding to in my earlier post, the one that Lumpy Rumpy shat his pants over. No, I know it isn't a closed shop, but there must be a hell of a lot of pressure to conform as you say Barry.

UNITE is still an outdated dinosaur that deserves to be fucked off.

For the first time in my working life I have started to think about joined a union, albeit Unison not Unite.  The reason being is that I moved to a job, including moving house 200 miles, and found out two weeks later that a restructure was planned.  Six months in to the job and I am officially "at risk".  As this restructure would have been planned months before it was announced, it seems to me that it was quite irresponsible to recruit to posts that would clearly be under review.

On another note, BA staff should count themselves lucky if they survive with jobs.  I know I will - I've already taken a pay cut in my first six months.

i generally don't agree with Lumps because A.  he talks a load of lefty bollocks or   B.  I simply dont know what he's on about but this made me laugh because its true. Both of your political opinions are total shit because they are so extreme they have no place in the real world

So you think that the current state of politics is not total shit then?  :doh:

The difference between my sort of shit and Bumpy Lumpy's is that his has been tried and has failed every time, all over the world, whereas the time will come in the not too distant future to try mine out.

No, I think the current situation is total shit.

Trouble is I think your solution actually sounds worse.

Communism / hard line socialism is a failed idea. fair enough. But rampant free marketism in every walk of live doesn't exactly fill me with confidence given how left to its own devices the free market has a tendancy to get things very wrong, normally due to greed.

Bear with me caller...  ;)

I can feel links to "anarcho-capitalist" nut-job conspiracy theorist blogs coming on

They gave me 10,000 air miles at the start of the year as my flights home weren't in any way affected by the Xmas 'strike'. I like BA, without them I would have to drive an hour and a half to a metal shed in Germany to fly to Stanstead with Ryanair arriving at midnight to get to Swindon matches.