subject2load

…… as reported in Business supplement of today’s Daily Telegraph


A few direct extracts from the piece :

“British Airways will award bonuses worth thousands of pounds each to pilots, cabin and ground crew as its Chief Executive Sean Doyle tries to restore morale among its 20,000 staff.
Cabin and ground crew will receive “a gesture of thanks” worth 10pc of annual salary. Pilots will receive a more modest payout.

………..

The 5pc bonus to pilots, worth £7,500 to those on a salary of £150,000, for instance, is thought to reflect the fact that they are paid more than cabin and ground crew

……………

…….[predecessor] Mr Cruz oversaw the laying off of 10,000 staff as the flag carrier scrambled to cut costs during the pandemic. The move was described as a “national disgrace” by politicians and left staff morale at rock bottom levels”

BOH

Some may have seen it as that but as many thought at the time, it turned out to have been 100% necessary. Not many businesses could have survived an overnight 80-90% reduction in income and done nothing. Politicians calling it a "national disgrace" were simply trying to curry favour with the electorate

Nice to see Sean Doyle doing something like this though

Confus

… and nothing at all to head office staff, according to some of those massively disappointed by the news! Can’t wait to hear how that plays out

SxMan

remind me why they decided to cut all their staff rather than rely on the governments furlough scheme. I thought it was just a golden opportunity, in their eyes, to remove long-standing staff who were on legacy contracts.

Anonba

In the contact centres weve been offered 3 one off reward payments this year. They add upto to 10% of our base pay if we get them all. Of course they are conditional on BAs performance which i understand. The thing is for those of us on older contracts it doesnt even put our pay this year back to where it was before they cut our pay in 2020… and they are one off payments with a vague promise we might get s 5% increase next year.

I’m glad they’ve given us something and at least sean doyle is trying. But to me and lots of others who took pay cuts in 2020 it doesnt go far enough.

BOH

The ship on that debate sailed over two years ago now and I really don't want to have it again. But most businesses (including the group I work for) I recall used a combination of furlough and redundancy - and in our group we saw business "only" decline by around 15%. That's the difference....and probably the reminder of why that you were asking for.

KARFA

Considering BA flights are still very much lower than pre covid, and furlough has well and truly ended, it wouldn't make any sense if BA still had a pre covid staffing level. Back in march 2020 BA were already expecting recovery to pre covid levels to take until 2024 at least, and I think subsequent events have shown this may be longer.

Now you may well argue BA let too many people go at the time, and that is a reasonable point. But I am afraid no redundancies was not a realistic option.

Anonba

Its not just about redundancies its also about those of us staff who stayed and had cuts in pay and conditions forced on us. They could have made the cuts temporary measures, but instead made cuts to long standing contracts they always thought were too generous.

flyertalker00133

The main issue isn’t the number of people they kept, it’s that they cut pay of people they kept on.

That said I think you’d be surprised how many people they want on the books now and for this summer’s flying compared to pre-Covid levels.

BA is about as good at employee relations as Enron was at regulatory compliance.

Waterhorse

No, it’s all staff get the 5%.

JFX1764

Not seen anything anounced for banded staff yet

Confus

Definitely not, it’s only for non-banded staff. There are admittedly a very small number of non-banded staff in office roles and for them it will apply, but the majority are banded and get nothing. I have friends in that position, and trust me, they are unhappy bunnies.

rockflyertalk

Plenty of businesses did see a drop in 100% income. Hospitality as an example. Some may never be seen again.

What is clear is that established, large airlines have survived. That is the first and foremost point. BA, U2, FR etc are all still here. Whether that’s due to actions they took but ultimately these businesses are huge and have large investors (Qatar as an example). Whilst they are not immune to insolvency, they do have far more opportunities to stay alive than a local shop, restaurant or nightclub.

I dislike current corporate structures. They don’t value their people in trenches as much as the boardrooms. There’s an imbalance and I’m a capitalist. But BA are/were going too far in their pursuit of short term financial returns. That is clear. It still is.

All industries need to step up and value their staff far more not so much for a socialist agenda but to create a better balance between the staff on the ground and the fat cats. I hope that’s apart of how businesses respond as we move forward out of what was the most challenging landscape in decades.

All I would add is that you can’t buy morale! Motivation possibly. But morale comes from culture which comes from people.

Bullswood

I'd agree that a fair day's pay is fundamental, but for true "feel good about the company" morale you also have to give staff a product which they're proud to deliver and for which they're adequately resourced.
It would be good to use the post-covid rebuild to get back to the time when people were prepared to pay a premium to choose BA, with a focus on building revenue and not just cutting costs.

xenole

I would suspect that this is being done to ward off / pre-empt any potential talk of strike action. Butter people up with token amounts, and quite often they forget all their woes.