Originally Posted by
London21
2 nights in Vegas rest. Ridiculous.
We all know why they want to keep this but it is obviously not required.
If anything the change to 1 night may mean people only working the return with a 1 night hangover as apart from the 2 night out hangover that usually happens on this route
Whether you find it ridiculous or not it doesn't matter. It's in the agreement that the Airline has signed with the LGW base, agreement that the airline is now binning for its own internal purposes, i.e. improving profitability. Now, an enlightened approach would be to offer something in return, but this isn't the case.
The guy from Head for Points wrote an article some time ago (when I still went around by the nickname '13900', before stupidly locking myself out and becoming '13901') about the potential for strike, an article that I didn't take too seriously. In all honesty, I should've known better. In the past 3 years BA has: 1) closed the defined contribution scheme; 2) closed ICC bases in GRU, EZE, HKG, SIN; 3) reduced all HQ areas by 30%, in some cases more; 4) outsourced all Line Maintenance but for 2 stations in Europe; 5) outsourced IT, with the loss of approx. 1,000 jobs; 6) modified the grading structure in LHR, with the end of most of the highest paid roles; 7) reduced greatly middle management in the operation at the hubs; 8) closed a number of US stations and most of Europe's.
Some of these activities were forced, and I don't feel animosity at having been treated the way that I, personally, have (having to re-apply for your own job twice in 5 years, my team has shrunk 50%). However, BA has won in all of the above cases, sometimes extremely easily. It's understandable that they're confident that they'll slam dunk this pay deal too (the real thorny issue is the pilot/crew pay deal, the LGW strike and the MF scheduling agreement are sideshows). However I don't think that it'll work, especially if pilots go for it too.