Branson must be jubilant at the prospect of a BA strike. On Virgin’s aircraft are the words ” Britains Flag Carrier “. If the strike reduces the value of BA the merger with Iberian Air will be a take over and much admin work will move overseas. If the merger ends up with Iberian Air as the dominant partner, I can see Iberian air crew being brought in. There is plenty of unemployment in Spain .

so your analysis of the problems facing BA is the utterly uninformative “disastrously mishandled business strategy” and remedy is new management.

It’s down to Len McCluskey’s personal ambitions.

Okay, so he might destroy BA and lead to thousands losing their jobs, but as long as he becomes Gen. Sec. of some God-forsaken Union, that’s a price worth paying.

#3

Do you realise how silly you sound? If you can persuade 74% of union members to go without pay for nearly half a month to help get you elected, you’ve pretty much got the election sown up without needing to go on strike.

(Apologies if your comment was parody; I’m obviously feeling a little humourless today if so.)

“If you can persuade 74% of union members to go without pay for nearly half a month”

They are not going without pay, the union is going to pay them. Can’t remember where I read that to check but the implication was that it would be their actual wage.

If BA is indeed experiencing economic problems, the blame lies with management’s disastrously mishandled business strategy. Walsh should step down now. And take the rest of the board with him.

agreed.

#5

That’s true but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t decided until after the ballot had been taken. So at the point they were ballotted, workers would’ve had to assume worst-case-scenario they would lose the full amount.

Ha! Well the strike’s illegal anyway.

The idiots at Unite tried to cheat and got caught, and now they’ll have to spend three weeks organising another ballot, and this time they’ll have to do it without getting caught.

Whilst everyone points and laughs at their ineptitude at cheating.

If BA is indeed experiencing economic problems

It is.

the blame lies with management’s disastrously mishandled business strategy.

Sort of. But can you name an alternative business strategy that BA could have followed that preserved cabin crew pay, allowances and benefits at current levels whilst keeping the company profitable (or even breaking even)?

The business strategy was mishandled because a focus on the revenues from premium-passenger-long-haul was the *only* way BA had any chance of surviving without cutting staff wages. That was never going to be sustainable, unless you thought the boom was going to last forever.

Good management would’ve addressed the cost base sooner, in a gradual and much less painful way, with pay and benefits cuts focused on new hires and existing cabin crew paid more to agree to lower staffing levels, rather than getting into the current desperate situation for everyone – but I don’t think that you or Unite would’ve supported such efforts at the time.

(I agree that the right-wing-press coverage of this is singly unedifying – the DM piece on the woman on sick leave is particularly vile.)

Martin, are you operating off some information the rest of us aren’t privvy to? How on earth do you know that the union isn’t sincere when it says that it tried to ensure the members it balloted weren’t the ones who were already notified of their future redundancy?

Even allowing for that, on an 80% turnout and 90% yes vote, the ballot still would have been a yes vote.

Martin, if I were you I’d withdraw that remark as it’s potentially libellous. (I am not threatening you; I would prefer you weren’t taken to court; I’m just mentioning it for your own benefit.)

Saying the strike is illegal is one thing – unfortunately it seems the courts would back you up – saying UNITE “cheated” is entirely different, and casts a slur on their reputation. The two things are not necessarily the same as UNITE could have been using old information because they were not given up-to-date information by BA, putting them in an anomalous situation where they were doing the most possible to make sure the ballot was legal while it was still illegal.

Assuming john b knows what he’s talking about (which I do) why do most left-wing responses to this strike (including this post) exclude any acknowledgment of this? I get the impression this sort of omission is symptomatic of (many? most?) left wing responses to these situations, and I think it does the left wing no favours.

Luis, I have engaged with John’s argument a couple of times on the other thread. But we don’t always bow to those who know more than us on a given topic. (If we did, all the right-wing trolls here would have to adopt my abolition-of-immigration-controls position, as I know more about immigration than them.)

Yes, even if I had no knowledge at all on this, I would still side with the workers who voted so overwhelmingly to go on strike. I would assume that they, and their union, know at least as much as John does, and my opinion proxy would be with them rather than with John. After all, there is much more at stake for them than there is for John. Their jobs, pay, conditions, and the future of the company they work for is all at stake. I defer to their judgement. Why does that do the left no favours?

@11:

Yes, you’re right. I also don’t want to get LibCon into any trouble either. I retract the remark, and apply Hanlon’s Razor instead.

I’m not asking you or anybody else to bow to anybody, merely to take a complete view of the problem and not ignore or reject anything that looks like “management’s point of view” and focus solely on what is perceived to be workers point of view, in quite a narrow a way that ignores how management’s problems can also be workers problems in the long-run, not just for the workers at BA but for the rest of us.

In this context, if it’s true that BA has no way of surviving unless it cuts cabin crew costs, by come combination of lowering staffing levels and wages, then ignoring that isn’t going to help the workers.

Now of course the task of the left wing is to stick up for workers, not only workers at the firm in question but also workers in other firms who have to purchase the output of the firm in question and/or pay taxes that mights be used to subsidize it. So of course I’m not saying the left wing has to swallow the management line, it has to push for the best solution from a left wing point of view. But your not going to find the best solution to any problem by ignoring half of the problem.

This post only mentions management incompetence, but does not mention, as John does, that management had few options, nor what the unions are going to have to give if a solution is to be found.

#15

That’s fair enough in normal circumstances. It’s fair enough too to ask workers to look at things from management’s point of view if they are being given a stake in how the company is run.

In the heat of industrial action and especially when workers are being attacked viciously through the press, dissent is being suppressed through the courts, and when up until today BA were refusing to even speak to the union, it is not the left’s job to make management’s arguments for them, but to full-throatedly back workers who’ve made a considered decision to go on strike.

Meanwhile the Queen knows how to travel in style…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236632/Your-commuter-carriage-awaits-The-Queen-catches-train-journey-Sandringham-Christmas.html

#17

you might be right – I have no idea what to do when things come down to a scrap. still I don’t see why left-wingers writing about strikes can’t take the broader view, nor do I see that a left-wing response portraying workers as blind to the broader problem is a terribly effective defense against right wing attacks on workers. Isn’t “the kind of people who would rather bring down a company than accept cuts” just the kind of slur right wingers like?

oops I mean #16 to tim f