bisonrav

Public companies are not run for the benefit of employees - they are run to generate returns for investors, who by and large are institutional pension funds. It's a job for the management to balance overhead costs and return, this keeps everyone happy. IAG are in a mass market commodity business, and are profitable, they will want to keep things that way. The argument that "the company is profitable, they can afford a pay rise" is fallacious populism - %margin is a key indicator and in heavily people based industries, increasing wages across the board creates a massive headwind. The scaling of the small increase throttles growth unless there is a quid pro quo. This is not in itself abusive capitalism, but people have to be aware that profits are not company property to be shared around up to the break even point. I doubt IAG are at risk of takeover any time soon, but in the worst cases, spiralling overheads cause share price reductions, leading to takeovers and job losses. A responsible leadership team will keep a tight lid on costs.

I don't really have an opinion on the merits of the strike. Unions are there to maximise benefits for members, that's their job. The late lamented Bob Crow was supremely effective in that regard, it was interesting that when he died, he wasn't lauded as much as, say, Tony Benn, probably because where Benn didn't really achieve much, Crow got massive year on year improvements for his members, and was therefore a danger to the bosses. I admired Crow as brilliantly effective, but I cursed him during strikes that affected me. Broadly speaking the staff I interact with from BA are pretty good and often superb, though I suspect everyone has had poor service from a young MF crew on a long haul return and wondered whether much of this was hangover related. So maybe trade pay and conditions off against improvement in service delivery and consistency?