Originally Posted by destere

Doesn't work out that way though. It can be a truly destructive mindset in business.

Originally Posted by orbitmic

I don't want us to go OT as the thread has an important topic and I'm one of those supporting MF and certainly not wanting them to be replaced, but I really think that's plainly wrong. Have you flown on Ryanair? Most of their staff speak perfect English (technically perhaps better than many natives) and they are of excellent quality and skills too. BA itself has plenty of Central European crew members, again, their language skills cannot be faulted and they are certainly not any less good than their counterparts from Britain or any other country. And of course, most of our restaurants and bars in London have been mostly hiring Central European waiting staff for years, and again they are excellent and speak excellent English, as are the colleagues many of us have in nearly every possible professional area.

Originally Posted by palmanfr

I did not follow that much the full story about this strike, but if what the unions are saying are true, then I support the strike of the MF cabin crews. In my experience, MF crews always proved to be providing a much better, personalized and friendlier service than Euro or World crews. While I believe that strikes should be done as a last thing in case no agreement can be reached, I think this one is clearly justified (unlike, let's say the previous AF and LH pilot strikes...)
The discussion concerning the English level of some MF crew members is complete rubbish IMHO.

Originally Posted by orbitmic

I don't want us to go OT as the thread has an important topic and I'm one of those supporting MF and certainly not wanting them to be replaced, but I really think that's plainly wrong. Have you flown on Ryanair? Most of their staff speak perfect English (technically perhaps better than many natives) and they are of excellent quality and skills too. BA itself has plenty of Central European crew members, again, their language skills cannot be faulted and they are certainly not any less good than their counterparts from Britain or any other country. And of course, most of our restaurants and bars in London have been mostly hiring Central European waiting staff for years, and again they are excellent and speak excellent English, as are the colleagues many of us have in nearly every possible professional area.

Originally Posted by rocketship87

Of course BA don't care about their crew or their customers, they care about shareholders. Shareholders don't care about crew or customers either, only about the stock price and dividends. The price may have rebounded since Brexit but is still far below what it was this time last year. If they raise wages, they need to make up that cost somehow; that's why they are so resistant. It's not personal, it's business.

Originally Posted by mikebg

What a load of nonsense! I make a living from stock market investments. I can tell you that virtually all genuinely successful companies regard their human resources as being one of the greatest assets of the company. Companies which treat their employees with disdain are actually worth less in the long run to their shareholders. Much research has been done on this topic, and it is crystal clear that a contented workforce earns great dividends for any company. I would not be interested in investing in a company whose management treated their employees with the levels of disrespect that we are seeing with BA vs MF.

Originally Posted by rocketship87

That is a very naive perspective. Perhaps personal investors are more concerned with long-term growth and success, but IAG don't care about personal investors either ... all of my institutional investors care a lot more about quarterly and year-end earnings

Originally Posted by ahmetdouas

I am very serious, I was in a Home Office National Insurance Number application centre a while back for my brother who wasn't born in UK and people were bringing interpreters with them as they couldn't speak English!

It is becoming a big issue in the UK, more and more perfectly legal employees due to EU laws do not speak a high standard of English, and with BA offering the pay they are for MF, if standards keep on falling they will have to employ these types of people with English levels that one would not expect from staff of "British Airways".

In fact, while I think it is nice that BA has such multicultural cabin crew on its fleet who are multilingual, it would seriously worry me if there was not even 'one British' CC member or even CSM on board. Call me old fashioned, but I like having a 'national airline' that has at least some staff of that 'nation'. In fact, one of my favourite parts of BA is having mainly British pilots who have the usual ' British' humour and understatement and calmness, and is one reason why I think BA has some of the best pilots in the world, regardless of the recent enhancements.

With most full service airlines, that is the case, and is one factor I feel in making a difference between say Ryanair and Lufthansa, Air France, American Airlines, Air New Zealand, etc. I am worried with the way British Airways is heading with MF, there will be no 'British' CC members left and it will just be a bunch of 20 year olds who came to the UK for 'tourism' purposes for a few years and are ok with the pay BA MF is offering them, who barely speak decent English beyond whats required by the law for CC!

Originally Posted by navylad

As I understand if, the job specs for applications include GCSE English at grade C as a minimum, BA can't discriminate against people applying who are from the EU and not the UK as this would be illegal and quite frankly, as long as they can speak good English, I don't see the problem with this , no need for subtle racism.

Sadly, you only have to look at www.cabincrew.com to see that application for BA CC jobs is still very much oversubscribed which does put workers in a vulnerable position.

Originally Posted by ahmetdouas

We are not talking about racism or discrimination here, we are talking about whether BA can find suitable employees for the amount of money being paid, as i don't see the dispute between BA and MF ending well unless BA radically change their tack.

The fact that you are saying people are queuing to apply is even more worrying!

Maybe the govt should intervene and set the way cabin crew are paid? I am worried the union may not be powerful enough to deal with a multibillion pound multinational like BA.

Originally Posted by ahmetdouas

Maybe the govt should intervene and set the way cabin crew are paid? I am worried the union may not be powerful enough to deal with a multibillion pound multinational like BA.

Originally Posted by NWIFlyer

The government will not intervene in a non-regulated, private business. That's not how it works in the UK, except for setting the legal minimum wage - which doesn't really apply here. Sure, (House of) Commons committees can call Alex Cruz before them and question him on industrial relations, but they don't actually have any power to make him go down a path that he doesn't want to explore.

I also don't subscribe to the 'Eastern European' (or any other country) effect here. The fact is that any new cabin crew will have to base themselves somewhere within commutable distance of LHR, so the cost of living for them will be very similar to that of the existing employees. If current MF crew cannot sensibly afford to live on the existing wages, a new starter potentially starting even further down the seniority chain certainly won't be able to for any length of time. No-one is going pull their lives apart to re-locate to London to take a job that doesn't ostensibly move them forward in terms of disposable income, so I simply don't see an enormous influx from outside the UK unless BA opens bases downstream - which is hardly a cheap option!

The best option here is still for BA to pay a living wage. Anything else just creates pain all round - for crew, for BA in the costs of training replacement staff, and for passengers. If Alex Cruz wants to take on the Union and try and break it (which sounds more like a Willie Walsh edict given past history), it'll just create a lose-lose-lose situation.

Originally Posted by navylad

I hope BA does see this a turning point and invest in good working conditions for their crews as this does lead to a better product as a customer, I know when I worked whilst at university in a call centre, the multinational insurance company i worked for paid way above the average rate and you could genuinely see the difference in quality and loyalty.