British Airways to cut legacy cabin crew base pay by no more than 20%

British Airways has published its pay proposals for legacy cabin crew today.  The plan is that no-one will see their base pay fall by more than 20%.

The aim is to ensure a soft landing between current pay scales for legacy (pre 2010) crew and the new, much reduced, pay scales.  The new reduced pay scales are very similar to what post 2010 employees currently earn.

Put simply:

No legacy cabin crew member will receive a pay cut (base pay only) of more than 20%

Crew members will receive NO future pay rises until inflation lifts the level of Mixed Fleet pay to the 80% level

Here are three examples – the numbers are from BA:

Cabin Service Director (Worldwide or Eurofleet crew)

Typical current base pay: £56,000

Base pay for the new equivalent Manager role:  £32,000

Pay of CSD is cut to (£56,000 x 0.8) £44,800 with no future increases

Purser (Eurofleet crew)

Typical current base pay: £46,000

Base pay for the new equivalent Manager role:  £32,000

Pay of Purser is cut to (£46,000 x 0.8) £36,800 with no future increases

Main crew (Worldwide or Eurofleet crew)

Typical current base pay: £31,000

Base pay for the new equivalent Cabin Crew role:  £17,000

Pay of crew is cut to (£31,000 x 0.8) £24,800 with no future increases

It is important to note that this analysis ignores any comparison of allowances and bonuses.  Legacy crew will lose their existing bonuses and allowances and will move to the new merged crew package.  It is not clear how these packages compare and whether the difference in allowances is greater or less than 20%.

Will these proposals be enough to persuade enough legacy crew to sign the new contracts and not accept redundancy?  The new contracts also require a move to a mix of short-haul and long-haul flying which will not suit many legacy crew for personal reasons.  Other contractual terms, such as the number of nights legacy crew get to stay away before a return flight, will also change.

As we’ve said before, with 60% of cabin crew on legacy contracts, British Airways needs at least half of them to stay.

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