Archive for the ‘Industrial Relations’ Category

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts (or Guarantees)

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Three weeks ago, the Greek Minister of Culture and Tourism, made a speech in which he promised that any tourist travelling to Greece who suffered any form of disruption would have their extra costs refunded by the Greek government. This was a very sensible gesture to make in view of the run of strikes that Greece is suffering. He even made the sweeping statement that the guarantee would cover any form of delay, even something outside Greece such as another Icelandic volcano.

Today, there is a General Strike in Greece and tourists are bound to suffer delays and extra costs.

Unfortunately, we can find no information on how this government guarantee works.

A Google search merely brought up the original press announcement.

The UK branch of the Greek Tourist Office is not much help – their website (www.gnto.co.uk) is “under construction”.

An email we have just sent to to the Press Office of the Ministry in Athens has been returned as “undeliverable” – they probably could not have replied because they are on strike anyway!

The original offer was an example of very good marketing. It would definitely help encourage people to visit Greece if they knew they could do so without running the risk of building up a lot of additional expense should they be  travelling during a strike. We are sure that the costs of claims would be greatly offset by the tourism revenue that such a “peace of mind” deal offered.

But where is the guarantee? What is a tourist supposed to do? Is the offer just meaningless PR?

We certainly hope not…

Posted in Destinations, Industrial Relations | Comments Off

Why the BA Strike is Not Good for Anyone

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

BA are now in the middle of the second of three rounds of five-day stoppages by cabin crew. That means in around ten days, all will be back to normal – until UNITE call the next strike.

BA are actually operating around 80% of all their flights so, if you have a BA ticket, you might not be too inconvenienced.

Unfortunately, the BA strike is hitting passengers of all airlines.

Some passengers are deliberately not booking with BA (even for dates after the strikes due to continuing uncertainty) and other airlines are being very cautious about selling seats at lower fares.

Quite simply, this means that if you want to travel with easyJet to Amsterdam, Madrid, or anywhere else served by BA next week, you are likely to be quoted a higher fare than normal – and probably for the next couple of weeks as well. The same is true with all other airlines as well as Eurostar and rail services from London to Scotland.

If you want to travel after the strike period, it might be an idea to wait for a while. If the BA dispute is resolved, or if there is a long delay before the next strike, fares from other airlines might reduce a bit as loads return to normal. Unfortunately, no airline is going to sell tickets at its lower fares if it thinks it can hang on to the seats and sell them to stranded BA passengers at top prices.  Once this is no longer a possibility, fares will have to go back to their regular levels.

Let’s hope that is soon!

Posted in Airfares, Industrial Relations | 1 Comment »

Why the BA Cabin Crew Strike is still on

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Whilst a great many BA cabin crew are working as normal, a significant minority are on strike and show no sign of giving up.

Their union seems to have given up fighting against the new terms imposed by BA but is at loggerheads with the company over two questions:

- They want some union leaders who have been dismissed or are undergoing dismissal procedures, to be reinstated. The union surely realises this is a non-starter. There are perfectly adequate legal channels for employees to use if they feel they have been unfairly dismissed. No self-respecting company could be expected to back down on issues relating to bullying of other staff.

- The reinstatement of staff travel which was removed when the first strike started. On the face of it, this is confusing because BA has already offered to reinstate staff travel for the strikers after they have been back at work for some period.

So what is all the fuss about?

The answer is very simple – loss of seniority in the staff travel system. BA is offering to give back travel privileges but without any seniority. This hits staff in a number of ways:

- Staff on wait-list for flights are prioritised by rank and seniority.

- Staff are given some completely free tickets (not on a stand-by basis) every year after a number of years of service.

- BA used to give staff travel across the board to all retired staff. Now they get staff travel linked to the years they have served.

Basically, someone of 45 who has worked for the company for life would be getting two free, bookable (with restrictions) tickets each year and have staff travel for life assuming he or she stayed until retirement. Now, the free tickets are gone as is much of their entitlement in retirement. This is very much more serious than simply losing the travel perk for a few months which is how the issue is being reported in the press.

It is going to be very difficult to find a way out of this. Huge resentment has built up within BA from other staff and cabin crew against the strikers. The airline cannot be seen to back down. Yet, it also needs to get some of these people back to work. At a guess, they would probably be more than happy if 1,000 of them never returned but the other 2 or 3,000 are mostly “good” crew who have been led horribly astray by BASSA and UNITE.

It must be very tempting for BA to go behind the back of UNITE and offer an improvement in terms to those who have been on strike but go back to work. Sadly, UNITE also represent other areas in the airline and this would be seen as a declaration of war by the airline.

Finding an agreement that will work for most of the strikers and be acceptable to other BA staff as well is going to prove very difficult.

Posted in Industrial Relations | Comments Off

An Interesting Take on “Democracy”

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of Unite, raged against the High Court Decision to ban cabin crew strikes as a dreadful blow for democracy. The decision to over-turn the original ruling will no doubt be welcomed by Unite as a return to democracy.

Mr Woodley has just returned from a trip to Cuba where he made a speech to celebrate the 51st anniversary of Castro coming to power.

Cuba is, effectively, a dictatorship. It simply would not be possible to call any sort of strike in the country.

In Mr Woodley’s view, it would seem that “democracy” is not always desirable.

Posted in Industrial Relations | Comments Off

Disgraceful Air France

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

As we said in an earlier post, we think it is dishonest if an airline continues to take bookings for flights during a period when one of its unions has announced a strike. We appreciate that unions often threaten to strike but do not always carry out the threat. However, once dates for a strike have been officially declared an airline must warn passengers. The obvious thing to do is to put a note on the home page of the website to inform passengers of potential disruption.

Anyone booking after a strike has been declared is unlikely to be covered for disruption by their travel insurance. We imagine an airline that knowingly takes money for flights it might not be able to operate, without giving due notice to the passenger, is on very questionable legal ground.

Last week, we pointed out that both Air France and TAP had strikes announced by their unions for the end of March which were likely to severely disrupt services. Neither airline had bothered to mention this on their website.

We are now pleased to see that TAP have got a very visible announcement on their home page – so well done to them, even if it is a bit late.

Air France, on the other hand, clearly do not care about their passengers. There is not a word of the cabin crew strike on their website and we were able to go through all the stages of booking a flight for the strike period, up until payment, without any warning sign appearing.

The pilots union of Lufthansa have just announced a strike for the period of 13th to 16th April and, almost immediately, Lufthansa have shown this on their homepage. It has to be said that, in the past, Lufthasna were not always so punctilious but it is good to see they have improved their standards.

On the other hand, it is hard to think of anything polite to say about Air France. An airline that treats its passengers with such contempt should be avoided at all costs and at any time – not just when they are suffering from strikes.

PS

Unions called off the strike late on Tuesday evening. That is good for passengers but does nothing to remove the blame from Air France for misleading its customers.

And on Wednesday evening TAP announced that it had reached agreement with its pilots so that strike will not go ahead.


Posted in Airlines, Industrial Relations | 1 Comment »

More Strikes

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

We should not become so besotted by British news that we forget what is happening abroad. The strike by BA cabin crew is hogging the headlines but did you know that:

Air France cabin crew are planning a walk-out for three days from 26th march?

TAP pilots are also intending to strike from 26th to 31st march?

Neither the website of Air France nor TAP have any information on these planned strikes on their home page. We regard this as scandalous. It is the duty of any airline to inform passengers of possible disruption – even if the company still feels it can negotiate a settlement with its employees. To keep selling tickets but not inform people (either those who already have tickets or those who are about to buy) is disgraceful.

It is also worth noting that the cabin crew union for American Airlines has applied for the right to strike and the Lufthansa pilots who went on strike earlier this year still have not settled their disagreement with the company so further action remains possible. Since no date has been declared for any action, we do not feel the airlines need inform their passengers at this stage.

However, the behaviour of both Air France and TAP suggests they are airlines to avoid, strike or no strike, since they appear to have little interest in their customers.

Tags:
Posted in Airlines, Industrial Relations | Comments Off

British Airways, BASSA and The Art of Negotiation

Friday, March 12th, 2010

The TUC has tried and failed abysmally to help BASSA (The British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association) and its parent union, UNITE, to win its argument with BA.

Before they got involved, the TUC should have been aware of the following:

- Much of what BA wants is perfectly reasonable. Some of the old-style working practices were unacceptable. Most cabin crew do not seriously defend these.

- The high salaries of cabin crew quoted in the Press are highly misleading. They only apply to a small proportion of older staff working their way out of the company on contracts which go back to BOAC days. Younger cabin crew earn substantially less and no one could consider them over-paid by industry averages.

- The true sticking points in negotiations are fairly small but significant. In particular, there is a real concern amongst cabin crew that the airline really only wants to employ a constantly changing group of young, and cheap, crew.

- The other part of the dispute is more complicated. BA management wants to break BASSA. They do not want to be dominated by the union any longer. So far, BASSA have played into BA’s hands – most crew are very disillusioned by the way BASSA has negotiated with BA and it seems likely that once the dispute is over, BASSA will either have to change radically or disappear. Crew are also angry that BASSA has played an “all or nothing” game – making an agreement earlier would have allowed them to obtain some concessions which would have eased the fears that BA wanted only to employ cheap, young crew.

Now, faced with the above, how do you negotiate?

The art of negotiation is to get the points you want whilst making the other side think they have won.

If the unions had said to BA that they will agree all their terms but with a few exceptions, they might have got close to what they want.

Instead, they presented their “alternative savings” plan to show how the company could save money. This is just a red rag to a bull. BA management is paid to manage. They do not want to be told how to manage by a union – especially when part of their aim is to loosen the grip of the union! Agreeing – even in part – to the alternative savings plan would have handed victory to BASSA which is inconceivable.

This tactic was doomed to failure from the start. It might not come as a suprise to discover that BASSA are so thick they could not see this and it is probably not much of a surprise to discover that UNITE are no cleverer, but one might have hoped that someone in the upper echelons of the TUC would have understood that the unions had been using an unworkable negotiating strategy.

The longer the dispute goes on, the less chance there is of getting any concessions from BA and the more likely it is that cabin crew will feel they have been sold down the river by both their company and the unions.

Tags: ,
Posted in Airlines, Industrial Relations | Comments Off