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British Airways avoids compulsory cabin crew redundancies at Heathrow and City

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British Airways has confirmed to staff that no cabin crew were made redundant in the recent restructuring.

(EDIT: It seems that this claim may only relate to Heathrow and London City and not Gatwick, which does appear to have some compulsory redundancies.)

BA CityFlyer redundancies

This is, of course, not as rosy as it sounds. Many legacy cabin crew members, hired before the introduction of lower paid Mixed Fleet almost a decade ago, were facing substantial pay cuts if they remained. These crew members are highly likely to have taken voluntary redundancy rather than remain.

Some crew members also chose to switch to part time work. In addition, given that Mixed Fleet staff at British Airways tend not to see their job as one for life, there will have been a number who had been planning to leave and were spurred on by the carrot of a cheque.

With ticket and sales and flight schedules for the Autumn running well below projections, however, there is likely to be another round of job losses to come.

Comments (58)

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  • memesweeper says:

    Most people would think
    1. being told your role is redundant
    2. being offered something else
    3. turning it down
    4. getting a redundancy cheque
    is being *made* redundant not choosing to take voluntary severance. … but BA’s press office obviously want to spin in a different way.

    • RussellH says:

      I agree. Having just spent a chunk of this morning reading up about redundancy in order to advise someone else…

  • Donna Callaghan says:

    I’ve just met with an ex flying friend who was made redundant. Not voluntary.
    I know of others. All Heathrow based, so this article is incorrect and BA are not being truthful

    • Rob says:

      Send me the name, their email address, confirmation they are Heathrow cabin crew and that they were made compulsorarily redundant with no alternative job offered. I will get BA to verify it.

      • Mikeact says:

        That seems a fair enough to me, but be sure to be fair if BA are caught out with their pants down.

      • Ry says:

        Because that wouldn’t be in violation of GDPR

        • Rob says:

          No, because I will get their written permission first – which is why I need the email address.

          Still waiting here. I’ve asked about 15 people now who deny this story to give me a name but no-one has, oddly ….

  • Ken says:

    BA boasting that there were no compulsory redundancies is like Boris Johnson claiming he is dad of the year.

    I doubt people are shy that they took the money or worried about “losing face”.

    If your only option is a job with massively reduced salary, with worse terms, doing something you either don’t fancy or consider it a demotion AND by taking it you give up your old contractual enhanced redundancy rights then it may not legally be compulsory but I doubt it feels very voluntary.

    • Ken says:

      Oh yeah – if as a long serving WW fleet cabin crew you didn’t accept the VR , you went into the fire and rehire pool with (at the time) no guarantee there would be a job for you.
      With the kicker that if you chose that route & there wasn’t a job you’d now only be getting statutory redundancy.

  • Mikeact says:

    It’s fine making critical comments, but what would you do given the circumstances ? A £50/100 k cheque for each, or more ? And then what ? It seems to me that there is no ideal solution and looking what some airines have done BA have done better than most. If they haven’t, then you can share the blame with the Unite idiots who decided not to engage.

  • P says:

    I do not know who is right or wrong in this semantics battle about redundancies. I know though that I do not trust what BA say.

  • AJA says:

    I think unfortunately BA will have another round of redundancies. They won’t be the only airline,

    German publication Manager Magazin is reporting Lufthansa is considering an employee reduction of 30% (that’s roughly 40,000 out of 138,000 staff)

    Lufthansa senior management is extremely worried about the collapse in demand

    The Management Board is now assuming that global air traffic will only return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024.

    Lufthansa is currently still burning around half a billion euros per month, according to “Handelsblatt”. If the outflow continues at an undiminished pace, the government aid of around nine billion euros will be used up in about a year.

    https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/industrie/lufthansa-group-will-flotte-offenbar-deutlich-staerker-verkleinern-a-a199b4aa-1951-4d68-9104-9e4cdc3103a5

    • Ro says:

      Half of the Gatwick fleet have been made redundant . Are they less employees because they are not legacy WW? And those who are staying are forced to sign new contracts with worse conditions. I don´t know what BA is trying to achieve saying there were no redundancies in Heathrow.

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