More BA misery as cabin crew plot strike
BRITISH Airways passengers face even more turmoil with cabin crew set to stage another four-day strike.
Unite announced that its members will walk out from June 16 – after the airline’s bosses failed to resolve a long-running pay row with the union.
It comes just a week after hundreds of thousands of passengers had their travel plans wrecked as BA cancelled or delayed more than 1,000 flights over the Bank Holiday weekend – due to an apparent IT crash.
The strike, which will start on the Friday and continue over the weekend, threatens the plans of families preparing to jet off on their summer holidays. The latest action involves around 2,900 members of BA’s mixed fleet division – predominantly younger, and lower-paid cabin crew who have joined the company since 2010. It comes after an offer aimed at resolving the pay dispute was narrowly rejected last week.
Striking cabin crew are also furious about BA’s decision to strip them of their entitlement to discounted fares. Dozens of flights have already been cancelled in 26 days of walk-outs that cabin crew have staged since January. BA will try to minimise the latest impact by leasing planes and drafting crew from rivals.
A spokesman said: ‘ We will fly all our customers to their destinations. Strike action is completely unnecessary. We had reached a deal on pay, which Unite’s national officers agreed was acceptable. We urge Unite to put the pay proposals to a vote of their members.’ Basic pay starts at £12,192, although BA says all earn at least £21,000 a year once hourly flying pay and bonuses are added. Unite claims the average pay is £16,000, including allowances. It has described this as ‘poverty pay’.
Unite last night accused BA of ‘punishing’ workers for striking by stripping them of valuable travel perks. Its assistant general secretary for legal services Howard Beckett said: ‘Punishing staff for using legitimate industrial means to reach a wage deal is a culture that Unite cannot accept.’
Meanwhile BA was accused of doing the ‘ bare minimum’ to compensate the thousands hit by the IT crash.
It has vowed to honour EU rules, which stipulate it should pay ‘welfare claims’ such as hotels, meals and phone calls, on top of payouts of up to £524 for delayed or cancelled flights.
But consumer group Which? said it was ‘simply not good enough’ just to follow EU rules and urged it to automatically compensate passengers.
The airline has said around 75,000 passengers saw flights cancelled. In a letter to BA boss Alex Cruz, Alex Neill, managing director of Which? home product and services, said: ‘Opting to do the bare minimum when compensating your customers for your failure to deliver the service you promised will undoubtedly cause further stress, inconvenience and financial hardship for passengers.’
A BA spokesman said: ‘We have no desire to be obstructive in any way and have put additional resources into our call centres...’
Yesterday the airline looked set to blame a worker at contractor CBRE Global Workplace Solutions who rebooted the system too quickly when power failed at one of BA’s data centres last Saturday. A CBRE Global Workplace Solutions spokesman said: ‘We are the manager of the facility for our client BA and fully support its investigation. No determination has been made yet regarding the cause.’
‘We won’t accept staff punished’