BA cabin crew ‘plan guerilla tactics to disrupt the airline’
01.02.11
British Airways cabin crew are planning to use guerilla tactics to disrupt the airline’s operations, The Daily Telegraph reports. Having voted in favour of fresh strikes, the airline’s cabin crew, who are members of the British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA), have decided against simply staging a repetition of last year’s walkouts.
Instead, they are considering calling strikes and then cancelling some of them at the last minute, which would throw the airline into turmoil. Managers would have to deal with two crews turning up to work on the same flight - the strikers and the volunteers who were enlisted to replace them. That alone could create a delay and BA would also be legally obliged to pay staff who turned up to work, even if they had been expected to go out on strike.
The newspaper reports that some hardliners want to go further and are considering a work to rule. This could see crew refusing to help passengers lift cabin luggage into overhead bins, or withdrawing goodwill - such as turning up early for pre-flight briefings.
Even small glitches can have massive consequences, especially at Heathrow, where the airport is operating at capacity. Missing a departure slot can lead to a flight facing a significant delay and, over a period of time, could wreak havoc on BA’s operations.
The union, a branch of Unite, wants to disrupt the airline’s operations without exposing more of its members to disciplinary action. A BASSA member told the newspaper: ‘Working to rule, is working to the company’s own rules. Only the goodwill of the workforce brings common sense to working practices.
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