An article in today’s Telegraph on the BA strike reports that if striking cabin crew miss one day of work they can lose up to two weeks pay. That looks, on first glance to be a little OTT, not to say dis-proportionately punitive on the part of management. Read on, however, and it becomes clear that:
>Crew who fly to Australia, for instance, are rostered to work for 14 days – the amount of time BA allows for the crew to fly to and from Sydney, rest in between, as well as have four days’ rest at the end. <
So you work for one day and get paid for two weeks. Later in the article, a union spokesman says:
>A Unite spokesman said: "This is vindictive behaviour. We regard it as punitive for people to lose two weeks' pay for undertaking industrial action for just one day,…<
So it's OK to work for a day and be paid for two weeks, but not to lose two weeks pay if you don’t work for that day?
I should, in fairness, add that as one who used to do the Hong Kong UK trip 7 or 8 times a year when I was working in HK, I can say from experience that 3 days is about right for the time it takes to recover to a fully compos mentis state if travelling Eastbound, but that coming this way, a day is ample, so why the cabin crew need four days is a little beyond me. (Ferret, you might have a view on this?)
The principle seems sound, however, if one withdraws one’s labour, then the fruits of that labour are lost – in this case, 14 days’ pay. Bummer!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Sounds about fair to me. The schedules would be made up and there would effectively be no other work for the next two weeks available for them.
Nobody is making them work for BA, they can always go elsewhere!
The truth of the matter is that they are the most feather bedded flying domestic staff in the world and very well paid for what they do. Which being BA is done truculently with a supercilious manner. Most of them wouldn’t last a week elsewhere with their attitude to customer service with the exception of Aeroflot!
Steady on CO, Aeroflot are not bad at all these days – internationally, that is, domestic flights are still a bit of a worry, I tend to drive a lot 🙂
I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg, Bravo. When the Government – whichever one gets elected – gets going with the cuts after the election, I think we could be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing.
Doesn’t sound fair to me at all.
If a person phoned in sick on a flight to wherever do they have ‘wherever’ days deducted?
Hey, I’m no fan of the marxism that appears to be rife in the UK at the moment, but to me fair has always been fair.