British Airways has had a rocky few years. Before Christmas it was counting the costs of a dispute with the pilots’ strike reportedly grounding 1700 flights and wiping around £80 million off its profits. This is in addition to previous data leaks affecting more than 550,000 passengers, an IT meltdown affecting 58 million and abysmal customer service experienced by passengers as a result of all of the above. Consequently, British Airways found itself ranked as the 55th favourite airline so nowhere near the top spot accolade of its glory days. You would hope that all this would serve to prove that you cannot treat people with such long term disdain as pure commodities without consequences. But no, with the announcement of 12,000 brutal job cuts, British Airways has clearly not learnt any lessons from its past. In fact the airline has by far excelled itself in its ability to stoop to the lowest of the low but this time has it gone too far?
Yes it seems undeniably so as since writing this initial post BA now intend to fire 42,000 only to reinstate surviving employees on new contracts with much reduced pay and conditions. Part of an all time master plan. Opportunism at the very least, despicable beyond belief at its worst.
“It’s not about the money. It’s about using this as an opportunity to make contractual changes.”
“Duty. Honour. Responsibility. Decency. Solid British Airways characteristics, or at least they used to be.”
“Morals? Decency? Respect? Only if there’s a profit to be made.”
The shocking news that British Airways was to axe 12,000 jobs came as a cruel kick in the stomach to all those affected and the emotional outpour from grief-stricken and soul destroyed crew who are experiencing ‘a cocktail of emotions’ has this week reduced me to tears. Even more upsetting is that this announcement came on the day ‘we were laying one of our colleagues to rest.’
The savage cull has been described by crew as a ‘COVID-19 manna from heaven’ for IAG and the BA board: ‘a once in a lifetime opportunity for the company to divest itself of its more expensive workforce’ in a decimation of current contracts under the cover of crisis. Devastated cabin crew warn that ‘Make no mistake. Henceforth, ALL British Airways employees will be working on minimum salary contracts, with little job security and the cheapest and worst working conditions legally allowable.’
‘It’s a gift horse not to be ignored. Equally, for BA to accept a very cheap government loan would open the door for Virgin, its most bitter of rivals, to do the same, thereby giving it the opportunity to find possible salvation. Walsh and Cruz have therefore concluded that, rather than give their UK opponents any chance of survival, it is preferable to throw their most loyal people to the wolves, and then replace them in a few years with far cheaper labour. Two birds with one stone. Job done! Management bonuses and Veuve Clique all round’ to blindly toast their own fabulous shallow success.
The feeling is very much that ‘British Airways Management’s brand is one of callous, deceptive, malicious, money-only-focused driven, two-faced, hard-nosed robots who care nothing for customers or crews – their loyalty is firmly and singly dedicated to shareholders profit and costs.’
With this in mind, it’s no wonder that loyal and disillusioned crew are now asking themselves ‘Who wants to work for a company that treats its employees with such disregard? Over the last 10 years we’ve seen this company that we’ve all put our heart and soul and passion and sweat into change so much for the worse.’ Employees are now ‘In one big boat fighting for our lives during the worst nightmare we’ve ever seen………..not in the name of survival but in the name of greed.’
This blog post has been put together in the words of BA crew themselves and my heart goes out to each and every one of those on the ground and in the air who are affected by these cuts. British Airways is a company that announced £19bn in liquidity to its stock market just 5 weeks ago, expected that they would see an upturn in business by the end of the year, has a sister airline which has just received €1 bn in a state backed loan yet won’t ask for one themselves and is still in negotiations to buy another airline.
The intention to tear up of contracts and execute 12,000 redundancies is at the very least unacceptable and indefensible and at the very worst vindictive, selfish and has created a climate of fear and insecurity, which is wholly unforgiveable. By all accounts this ‘Was the final act of brutality from a relationship’ that has turned from ‘happy, loving and fruitful’ in days gone by into one which is purely ‘toxic and abusive.’
Has British Airways this time gone too far? I’ll leave you to work that out for yourselves but this information taken from Flight Global might just help you decide.
Iberia – €497 million profit in 2019 €1 billion in state loans with Vueling – NO REDUNDANCIES
Vueling – €240 million profit in 2019 – €1 billion in state loans with IBERIA – NO REDUNDANCIES
Aer Lingus – €276 million profit in 2019 pilots to work 5 days on, 11 days off for the foreseeable – NO REDUNDANCIES
British Airways – €1.921 BILLION profit in 2019 – 12,000 employees to be made redundant and those surviving the cull to have new contracts, working agreements, conditions and pay.
Perfect,y sums up BA’s approach to customers and staff . Thank you .
Many thanks for the comment. Glad you liked the post. Take care x
I mY h e missed it and understand this Bkog was a crew, but lets not for get the Loyal BA Ground Staff thT are also included
Hi Dave, thank you for commenting. Yes the post was put together in the words of cabin crew but is hopefully an all round reflection at the depth of feeling in the airline over such a despicable and unfair decision. Absolutely we must not forget the ground staff or indeed anyone affected by the cuts. I have amended my wording in the latter part of the post to reflect this.
This Company requires urgent investigation of its Management, it does not appear to be a fit and proper higher organisation, I have heard stories of desperate proportions regarding staff, mortgages, children etc, Can’t wait till Monday to see how Walsh and Cruz are going to squirm in front of the cameras and staff and public
Agreed Alan. Cruz and Walsh always seem to wriggle out of this that and the other but I truly hope that they will be held to account on this one. There is a lot of media interest so fingers crossed the pressure is piled on for a bit of backtracking!
Good post but you keep referring to cabin crew, and cabin crew only. This is every BA employee not just cabin crew. Like it or not the airline is not just made up of cabin crew. There are many others that are part of the airline and equally affected!
Thanks John, yes I appreciate this is an issue which affects all employees. I was asked to put this together on behalf of the crew but as I state in the post, my thoughts are with all those involved. This is a heartfelt sentiment which is also reflected in my posts on social media where I am doing everything I can to support all employees at British Airways and other airlines.
Those two muppets have no feeling for staff feelings. This pure greed. They are not interested in reputation. Just sheer profit,hence lining there shareholders and there own pockets. Very sad indeed
Yes David, it is a shame and they are indeed muppets (that’s putting it mildly) who have no regard for their staff or passengers. Nothing but pure greed as you quite rightly say.
Hi,
You quote” Devastated cabin crew warn that ‘Make no mistake. Henceforth, ALL British Airways employees will be working on minimum salary contracts, with little job security and the cheapest and worst working conditions legally allowable.’“
What needs to be understood is that over 5000 (current) crew have been working on these so called minimum wage salary’s for upto 10 years since the financial crisis allowed the company to create mixed fleet. Perhaps we need to revisit why this was created. Yes, it was to protect the T&C’s of existing crew, the same crew that are now opposed to this smash and grab. The company can take no more from mixed fleet, we have lived on the so called breadline since we started, and amazingly we have coped. All WE want now is just to keep our jobs. Perhaps legacy EF/WW can offer a solution to reduce their salary’s without the need and stress for us all to go through the pain of redundancies and new contracts.
Hi Shelley, yes that was a direct quote from a crew member. I was also on the new lower wage for a number of years myself so can see both sides. Let’s hope that agreement is reached which avoids painful and unnecessary redundancies. Sad times.
Well said. Staff in the US have been going through this for years. When slots open up they are filled with new hires at minimum wages. Unfortunately, not all but most don’t provide the services that career BA staff have given. Shameful behaviour.
Thanks Michael, yes it is shameful. Minimum wages all round!