Basking in Spain, £141k a year union boss plotting chaos
SITTING by a glorious sandy beach in the Spanish sunshine, this is the £141,000-ayear union activist plotting strike chaos over the summer holidays.
Brian Strutton and his wife Sue enjoyed a trip to Valencia in April, posting a picture of their sun-drenched break. While there they dropped in at a cookery school – the Escuela de Arroces y Paella Valenciana – to learn how to cook the city’s traditional paella dish.
Mr Strutton later posted on Twitter: ‘Just had a fabulous mini-break in Valencia, what a great city. Loved it.’
Since returning to the UK, the 9-year-old union veteran has been busy orchestrating a mass strike by British Airways pilots that could scupper the holiday plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
As general secretary of the little-known British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), it has emerged that Mr Strutton is paid a similar six-figure salary to many of the pilots he represents.
According to Balpa’s latest financial accounts, he received a total pay package worth just under £141, 00. This included a basic salary worth £107,62 . The previous year he was paid £1 ,242 – around £ ,000 more than the prime minister received that year.
But his generous pay package may rankle with Britons on far more modest incomes who have been saving up for their summer holiday all year – and who may this month bear the brunt of the pilots’ dispute as they face chaos at Heathrow and Gatwick.
A Balpa spokesman said: ‘We understand the frustration and worry that possible industrial action in British Airways will cause for the travelling public, which is why we’re doing everything we can to avoid taking industrial action.
‘Pilots have a legitimate dispute with their employer and not the travelling public. BA made a £2billion profit last year and pilots are legitimately asking for a fair share of the profit they contribute to.’ Pilots are paid an average basic salary of £167,000. On top of this they receive an hourly flying allowance whenever they are on duty worth between £14,000 and £1 ,000 a year.
But Balpa points out that many are paid far less, with entry-level pilots paid just £26,000 – and many are still also repaying their training debts of up to £100,000.
‘Frustration and worry’