BA boss tells critics: We’re in fight to survive
THE boss of British Airways today hits back at MPs who have criticised his plan to axe 12,000 jobs, warning that the airline is ‘in a fight to survive’.
MPs on the Transport Select Committee yesterday branded BA a ‘national disgrace’ for announcing redundancy plans for more than one in four staff while many are still on the Government’s furlough scheme.
In an article for The Mail on Sunday, Alex Cruz defends the mass redundancies, saying BA has to go through a ‘painful’ restructuring to survive the aviation industry’s biggest-ever crisis. Cruz also slams the Government’s 14-day quarantine for arrivals in the UK, which he says has dealt a ‘hammer blow’ to BA’s plans for more flights in July.
The BA chief executive writes: ‘We are in a fight to survive.
‘We know we will emerge from the Covid-19 crisis as a much smaller airline.
‘We will have fewer customers and fly fewer routes for years to come.
Our business will be laden with hundreds of millions of pounds in new debt, so any revenues we make when we return to flying will be swallowed up by loan repayments.’
Cruz dismissed accusations that BA is using the pandemic as an excuse to slash costs.
Unions have accused the airline of using a ‘fire and rehire’ strategy to downgrade pay and conditions for staff it keeps on.
The claims have led to a bitter stand-off with trade unions, with GMB and Unite refusing to attend talks unless BA withdraws its formal redundancy proposals. Last night, Balpa, which represents BA’s 4,300 pilots, also threatened to withdraw from negotiations.
Cruz accuses the unions of ‘scaremongering’. He says: ‘I will do everything in my power to ensure that British Airways can sustain the maximum number of jobs in line with the new reality of a changed airline industry and a severely weakened global economy.’
Huw Merriman, Conservative chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, yesterday led the criticisms of BA for announcing redundancies while 22,626 of its 42,000 staff are furloughed.
As of mid-May, BA had received close to £35 million from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Mr Merriman told The Mail on Sunday that he will this week press for a meeting with Chancellor Rishi Sunak to ask the Treasury to close the loophole that allows firms to make staff redundant while they are receiving taxpayer cash from the furlough scheme.
BRITISH AIRWAYS has a proud history of connecting Britain with the world and the world with Britain.
We’ve been doing it for more than a century and in that time we have been through major crises – but not one of those crises has come close to where we find ourselves now.
You only have to look up to see that flying has, to all intents and purposes, stopped.
It stopped more than two months ago and the stats speak for themselves.
In May this year, we flew 485 passenger flights. Last year, on the first day of May, we had flown that number of flights by lunchtime.
We had hoped for a return to some additional flying in July so we could begin to get back on track and give people the hope of a holiday after such terrible times.
But the Government’s decision to introduce 14-day quarantine for visitors arriving into the UK, without consultation or scientific evidence, has dealt our restart plans a hammer blow.
It is irrational to stop people travelling from countries with a lower risk of infection into the UK and to treat those that do come more harshly, under criminal law, than people who actually have Covid-19.
British Airways has been a wellrun, prudent business for many years. We have created good employment for thousands of people, opened new routes, paid billions in taxes to the Exchequer, paid regularly into the company’s defined benefit pension scheme and paid dividends to those who have chosen to invest in us.
But if you were to listen to some of our MPs, or certain trade unions, these achievements are worthless and even derided. Their attacks on British Airways are both partial and parochial. In conducting its recent review, the Transport Select Committee made clear its report would be ‘fuelled by the kind and impassioned messages’ it received, rather than the facts.
But the facts are clear. Economists at IATA predict international air travel won’t return to the levels of 2019 until at least 2023.
At BA, 98.2 per cent of our business is international. We know we will emerge from the Covid-19 crisis as a much smaller airline. We will have fewer customers and fly to fewer routes for years to come.
Our business will be laden with hundreds of millions of pounds in new debt, much of which must be repaid over a short term, so any revenues we make when we return to flying will be swallowed up by loan repayments.
Meanwhile, fleet-of-foot overseas competitors will be waiting in the wings to take the landing slots at Heathrow that our MPs have suggested BA does not deserve. British Airways has no absolute right to exist. We are in a fight to survive and, like our peers, we must consult in an honest, transparent and meaningful way on proposals to reduce the size of our workforce.
To suggest we are focused on anything but our immediate survival in the short term, plus a sustainable and competitive re-emergence for the longer term, is not true.
Unite and GMB have said publicly they will only meet us if we withdraw the Section 188 notices that set out our redundancy proposals.
For the record, if a UK company proposes redundancies it must follow the law, inform the unions that jobs are at risk and provide any and all information to make the consultation meaningful.
Our Section 188 notices are not ‘notice of dismissals’. Rather they outline every item that could possibly be consulted on. And both
Unite and GMB have form on this point. They have sued several companies for not correctly filing Section 188 notices when considering redundancies.
Indeed, BA was sued by Unite and the GMB in 2011 when they argued we had not provided a Section 188 letter before entering into discussions with them. This claim was settled.
So that is why we will not step back from our legal obligations on consultation to our employees.
We are consulting, and this week, despite Unite and GMB failing to attend over 250 meetings and counting, we announced we are exploring and will consult upon options for voluntary redundancy for our colleagues, within the limits of our cash-constrained position.
Like other companies facing job losses, I do not want to deprive my people of their livelihoods. It is painful to contemplate the scale of the change we need to make because I know we have the best people in the business – the most kind, caring and compassionate people who deliver the best British service.
I will do everything in my power to ensure that British Airways can survive and sustain the maximum number of jobs in line with the new reality of a changed airline industry and a severely weakened global economy.
This is a challenge not of our making, nor one we could ever have conceived.
We will continue to show up for union meetings and hope they stop scaremongering and attacking our brand and start doing what their members pay them for, namely representing them as they deserve.