BA Staff to Miss out on Bonus
Jackie Reddy March 21, 2017
Shrinking profit margins at Britain’s flag carrier may mean that employees will forego their usual bonuses, but BA is offering staff some one-off rewards.
With profit margins struggling at British Airways (BA), the carrier has announced that its staff will forego their usual profit-related bonuses. However, BA employees won’t go entirely empty-handed; rather, the airline has said that it will be giving staff a fractional reward for having met punctuality performance targets in one quarter of 2016.
In a letter to staff, as quoted by Bloomberg, International Airlines Group (IAG), BA’s parent company, said, “The 2016 all-colleague bonus scheme has triggered at a much lower level than in previous years. However, the British Airways board has decided that all eligible colleagues in the UK will receive a bonus with their March pay.”
The outlet has revealed that staff will receive a one-time payment of £400 ($494) at the end of this month as well as a complimentary return flight. While this reward system will apply to rank-and-file employees at BA, the website reports that the carrier’s management-level staff will still be eligible for a performance-based reward. The terms of this have not yet been made public.
2016 has been a difficult year for BA; in addition to struggling with a new check-in system, the carrier has also had to contend with the impact of multiple air traffic control strikes and terror attacks as well as the fall-out from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (EU).
However small, Bloomberg reports that this bonus is a way of garnering staff support during a time of job cutbacks and cost controlling, a strategy that is intended to boost profits.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
It is entirely normal to give little or no bonus to junior staff, and heavy bonuses to managers and above. However, quite why anyone would join BA as cabin crew these days is a mystery to me, the cabin crew I chat with are all disillusioned with BA as an employer. On my last TA flight one veteran crew member was taking the early retirement payoff of 40,000 pounds, and the rest were openly talking about it along with the potential tax implications. The young lady who crewed my internal shuttle flight told me that she was on call and summoned for this flight the prior night. She got up at 4am, took an hour to bring her hair and makeup up to "code", drove 30 miles to Heathrow, and then caught 2 flights totalling 2 hours of flying time for payment of about 30 quid. She was absolutely miserable. BA cabin crew are some of the most disillusioned employees I have ever met.
"While this reward system will apply to rank-and-file employees at BA, the website reports that the carrier’s management-level staff will still be eligible for a performance-based reward. The terms of this have not yet been made public." This is the biggest scandal these days.