British Airways Cabin Crew Strike, Cont.

Airline withdraws flight benefits from stiking cabin crews

Some people take airline jobs because they can bid hours and try to schedule their work around the rest of their lives, but I'll wager that most do so for the travel benefits. So it seems especially harsh that British Airways chose to punish cabin crews who went on strike to protect their working conditions and, I think, their very jobs. Click here for my earlier post and here for the Unite union's website including a backgrounder that they refer to as "The Truth About the BA Dispute," and BA's online outreach message to passengers. The latter, of course, will go away from the website when the issue is resolved. The union is also issuing Twitter updates. The Guardian, the well-respected newspaper that used to be called the Manchester Guardian and is anchored in a historic manufacturing, mercantile and shipping city and is traditionally sympathetic to unions, is currently conducting a poll about whether pulling flight benefits was too harsh. When I clicked on it, more than one-third of the respondents believed that it is.

I am in North America, far from the strike action and perhaps in no position to judge, but the union points out that cabin crew members are the airline's major point of contact between the company and the passengers, and from these thousands of miles, it seems that BA's choice of punitive measures might, in the end, be counterproductive.