Has Len McCluskey admitted that Unite’s actions increased the British Airways redundancies?

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• Dev says:

  11 Aug11 August 09:22

  It was always going to be easier for pilots to negotiate with BA as their salaries afford them a lot of wriggle room. Whilst it is hard to swallow, A cut of up to 20% pay cut for someone on £100K+ (I bet even the most junior of pilot is on £50k +) is more palatable than a 20% cut for someone on £20k (and with 40% or whatever number it is on mixed fleet), Unite did not have any margin.

  If I were a pilot, I would be looking to minimize my expenses, and ride out the next few years. They will still be paid a hell of lot more than many professions even with the pay cuts.

  For the record, I support t he principle that if a company is dumb enough to give generous T&Cs, than the workers have every right to defend them, and that includes all staff up to CEO level. I also believe that the tax system is unfair as it penalizes those who receive higher salaries … nothing is more fair than a single flat tax rate for all workers at the lowest possible rate!

  • Chris Heyes says:

    11 Aug11 August 16:19

    Dev@ I agree if a firm gives a benefit in its t & c it’s the firms fault i had a weekly allowance for over 15 years when the firm tried to buy it out (all employees agreed except me)
    The firm stopped giving it me, i took them to court as i had it it for over 15 years
    The company told me i couldn’t win as everybody else had accepted their tems
    But they was wrong the court said “As i had received the benefit for over 15 years”
    It was in my contract by right and the company had to come to a mutual agreement or carry on giving me the allowance
    I never came to an agreement simply because they tried to take it off me because others had agreed to being bought out

  • Alex says:

    11 Aug11 August 18:32

    Didn’t you say yourself that a cut of 20% is more palatable for someone earning 50k+ than someone on 20k? I’m fine with paying a higher tax, since in practice it means that those with low incomes pay less. I can afford it without too much pain. And I’m not even a citizen of this country, I just work here!

    Then again, I also took the 10% GWWC Pledge, so I’m effectively paying a voluntary extra “tax”. I might be just weird…

• Jay says:

  11 Aug11 August 09:30

  I think it’s just a plot to blame unite these big company’s are distroying peoples life’s government needs to do more fire and rehire should be illegal

  • AJA says:

    11 Aug11 August 12:19

    Fire and rehire is never going to be made illegal. If it is then you must also agree to never have payrises since you’re saying renegotiating contracts would be illegal too and that is what happens every time you have a payrise. You do not have a right to employment forever as an open-ended contract is illegal. Both parties must be able to end the contract giving reasonable notice to do so. Fire and rehire is one avenue but it is not the only means to do so. If Unite is so anti this then it should have engaged with BA in the alloted consultation time period.

• Dave says:

  11 Aug11 August 09:46

  Can’t believe how many are swallowing this bulls*t!

  Don’t blame Unite for what’s happening at BA. Blame BA! Their the ones imposing these cuts. They’ll blame the virus but they tried to do this a few years ago and Unite stopped them. This is just them taking their chances under the cover of the virus.

  • 351 says:

    11 Aug11 August 12:03

    I suppose you are also in favour of Unite’s “BA should lose slots” campaign too? I’m sure that will save plenty more jobs!

    • Chris Heyes says:

      11 Aug11 August 16:23

      351@ Why should BA keep the slots ?

      • 351 says:

        11 Aug11 August 16:35

        Ok if it shouldn’t, then why bother about all the cry about job losses etc by Unite in the first place? Just because certain sections of employees are worse off (read as legacy fleets), should ones who want a job and aren’t that worse off by these proposals have to suffer too so that Unite’s political agenda and BASSA’s member’s egos can be satisfied at the loss of other people’s jobs? Crazy!

      • Doug M says:

        11 Aug11 August 16:36

        Why should they lose them is a better question. They’re a commercial business with assets they use and have value. It’s not for for the government to intervene in that way.

• AJA says:

  11 Aug11 August 09:49

  “The pilot’s deal is also believed to have an element of ‘last in, first out’ which means that cabin crew redundancies would fall disproportionately on Mixed Fleet.”

  That’s the real reason McCluskey is suggesting this approach since it would protect WW and EF fleets and reduce the numbers of MF that Unite has never supported and never wanted to come into existence in the first place.

  But for all that it is too little too late. The restructuring has already started because Unite failed to engage. If the BALPA deal was so good why didn’t Unite engage weeks ago?

• John Caribbean says:

  11 Aug11 August 09:49

  Last Friday (I think) on Radio 4 PM the Unite rep was alluding to the differential treatment of pilots and cabin crew having a sex discrimination element. I imagine that’ll be the line taken in the media and parliament, if not in the courts

  • Andrew says:

    11 Aug11 August 10:43

    What’s the gender breakdown of cabin crew these days?

    It seems pretty much 50:50.

    • memesweeper says:

      11 Aug11 August 11:10

      Pilots is nowhere near 50:50 though.

      • Josh says:

        11 Aug11 August 16:22

        Good luck finding enough suitably qualified female pilots…

  • Lady London says:

    11 Aug11 August 18:19

    could be correct in that. even our government has declined to correct 2 serious issues in recent years where the worst affected by their own decisions were women. This is an area that unites all parties.

• Leo says:

  11 Aug11 August 09:53

  This is utter rubbish. BA would NEVER treat cabin crew the same way they treat pilots and unite knows that. The company sees pilots as a qualified asset, but cabin crew is disposable workforce. After all, virtually anyone could work as cabin crew, but not everyone can pilot an aircraft. If anything, what the gen secretary said was to highlight how differently cabin crew were being treated. The union took the best approach they could, given what they had to deal with: they knew that, no matter what they did, the cabin crew community would be drastically reduced, so they adopted a strategy that would help them appeal those redundancies later in court.

  • Rob says:

    11 Aug11 August 10:54

    But BA has been squeaky clean. I even heard that the redundancy lists were drawn up ‘blind’, ie by staff number rather than name, to ensure that there was no bias. I would be very surprised if there was a single thing done wrong that a court would find against.

    Even then, what are you arguing? That Person A should not have been fired. OK, Person A gets reinsted and Person B gets fired instead. Doesn’t help much.

    • Leo says:

      11 Aug11 August 12:58

      No, they haven’t. It was dirty and unethical, and still is. Cabin crew that were kept still don’t know, to this day, which t&cs they’ll be working on. Besides, the company had a policy for redundancies for years, but this time they flat out decided to ignore it and come up with a whole new system that favours new contracts. They wanted to get rid of the old contracts for years and they finally managed to do it. The pandemic was just the excuse for that. “Never let a crisis go to waste”.

  • Cheshire HR says:

    11 Aug11 August 14:25

    BA will have the law on their side in court, under the trades union act if the collective bargaining committee (in this case the TU) fail to engage after multiple attempts then what is know as Impasse comes into effect, the company can then carry on with the process whilst still trying to engage the TU. BA even took longer than the required 45 days to do it. Their is no denying BA have been immoral (kindest word I could use) in how they have done this, but they have not been illegal, Unite have played into their hands and actually helped BA. I already know of employment solicitors now being engaged to take action against Unite by some of the members and quite right as well.

    • Lady London says:

      11 Aug11 August 18:21

      BA is totally legally covered on this.

• MR R D LANG says:

  11 Aug11 August 10:10

  McCluskey has had a bee in his bonnet about BA for 20 years ever since he got a foot in the door when the BA Cabin Crew Union was taken over by Unite. It’s personal with him, and reciprocated, going back to when I worked there. Almost as if he has wanted to damage us as much as he can from Day 1

• Paul says:

  11 Aug11 August 10:16

  McCluskey is a dinosaur and undoubtedly his bluff and bluster has caused greater harm. There is a real need to remove these people form positions of influence.
  That said, the labour laws of this country stink.
  It’s incredible that somewhere like Germany can be as successful as it is with some incredibly powerful labour laws that protect employment.
  That stems from people working together, from staff representation on boards and from a general belief and understand that compromise and collaboration, at every level in society, delivers benefits.
  Its not perfect, nothing is, but it is light year ahead of and far more enlightened than, the confrontational approach of McCluskey/Walsh where the winner takes all. This is reflected across this country with a government with an 80 seat majority yet no such majority in the popular vote. It breads division and in my view our lack of collaboration and compromise is one reason why we are, once again, heading towards being the sick man of Europe

  • the_real_a says:

    11 Aug11 August 13:36

    Ive worked in companies that sent investment elsewhere because of worker groups. Ive also been personally involved in projects where Germany was “last in line” because of the fuss kicked up by the labour committees on very trivial items. Its not all roses, but i take your point although cannot help but think a similar arrangement in the UK would give a platform for the militant/woke types on crusades. You may or may not think this beneficial.

  • Josh says:

    11 Aug11 August 16:26

    I think “Germany’s success” comes as much down to frugality than anything else. Have you seen the state of train stations and underground stations in Germany for example?

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