Do you have any thoughts why this is?

it is weird there is NO gossip let alone statements. i hope all ground crew get every cent they are entitled to

Hopefully the silence indicates the parties are negotiating 🤞🏻

However much BA might like to play hard here, they simply cannot afford to IMHO. The court of public opinion is firmly on the employee side and the public’s current perception of BA is that it is in chaos of it’s own making.

View from the West Side of the Pond: also a Semi Proud Union Member (Our Union Management has some explaining to do in this years union election)

Depending on whether or not, and/or how long the strike goes on my guess is that Public Opinion will bounce back and forth for a week or so between Management and the Unions. After that there will be a fairly long period of both sides being blamed for the problems caused to the innocent bystanders by the Public and both sides will be joint Big Losers. There are plenty of historical examples of unions destroying a company and then the membership is then considerably worse off.

I completely sympathize with the unions on this but there are better ways to deal with this than a long walkout. Work to Rule has been known to make Company Management rethink things and the Union Management should be reminding their members that if the Company away goes so will the jobs. We've had a couple of instances over here where the local union has actually taken the attitude that "We need to provide the best quality" and drags the national union and the company along with them. The best outcome for all concerned.

But this is not one of the usual industrial disputes. BA reduced staff dramatically during Covid but also reduced the salaries of staff it retained after firing and rehiring them at lower salaries. Now demand is up, BA cannot get enough staff and has restored the higher salaries of management but not these employees. At the same time due to staff shortages, these employees are being asked to work extra days and longer shifts. Initially, the airline refused to even listen to them. In the meantime, inflation has jumped to 10% meaning that even if their previous salaries are restored, they will still be worse off.

Tafflyer

I agree with what you're saying. We have a huge issue in my union about pay that we should have had been paid, but the government doesn't want to pay us. It was a COVID thing where we were restricted to our ships and the government and and Navy people where heading off their ships for liberty on the same pier. This is not going to be good for several of our officials this year.

If BA management got their money, then the frontline people should as well. I might suggest that since Mr Doyle and the rest of the management team are generally not subject to the Hours of Service rules they should be pulling shifts on the line dealing with the problems caused by their poor decision making. Also the Union management should be pulling a few shifts as well since they obviously dropped the ball as well

Encouraging noises reported by the BBC today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62076602

I hope so, flying on a long haul work trip in just over 2 weeks...

Sky News says strikes suspended after better offer. Well thats good news.

Here are the important bits:
https://news.sky.com/story/british-a...-says-12647345

If only I were a betting man lol…

Some people might argue that if there is a reduction in flights for the next few months at least, then would there be a need for all these staff on potentially higher wages?

You could argue that but the whole reason for the cancellations is a lack of staff. A staff body the airline is desperate to hold onto as loosing them would plunge even more flights into the cancellation chasm.

It was a disgraceful and inept handling of pay, and for probably the first time in my life actually (mentally) supported strike action. It has been a shameful action by BA.