BA hits staff deal deadline day without agreement
30.06.09
The management imposed deadline for British Airways to conclude a deal with cabin crew and ground staff expires today without an agreement in place. The airline has been locked in talks with the Unite and GMB unions for weeks discussing pay reviews and redundancies amid a suggestion that it is losing £3 million a day.
The airline is though to be seeking up to 3,000 redundancies. It wants not only job losses - 2,000 among its cabin crew and 1,000 from check in and administrative staff - but also changes to working practices. BA chief executive Willie Walsh and internal staff newspaper BA News have hammered home repeatedly that the airline is in a 'fight for survival'. But Unite's national secretary for civil air transport, Steve Turner, has warned in a letter that such comments are 'unhelpful and hugely damaging to the company.'
There is a disagreement as to whether the current downturn in the UK airline industry is permanent or temporary with the two parties at opposite ends of the spectrum. BA wants permanent savings, but the union is only willing to agree 'temporary solutions to a temporary problem,' and has said that it is not prepared to allow the airline to gain all of the changes to pay, terms and working practices it has not been able to agree in the last 20 years in the current recession.
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