British Airways unsettled union negotiations threaten Christmas passengers

A failed negotiation between British Airways and a union of cabin crew is likely to affect the airline’s operations and passengers, particularly around this coming Christmas season.

BA’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, met with the union’s secretary, Derek Simpson, in an attempt to settle the dispute between the two sides. However, the meeting was concluded without an agreement.

Walsh declines to drop plans to enforce work changes on the airline’s 14,000 cabin crew, which the trade union Unite is asking from the managementinsisting on, in order to resolve the deadlock. BA’s decision to stick on to its plans leaves Britain’s flag carrier airline vulnerable to strikes that could ground its planes during the busy Christmas period.

BA has been badly affected by the global recession. The company wants to slash £ 140 million from the airline’s annual cabin crew expenditure after losing £ 401 million in the previous year due to unexpected decrease in passenger numbers.

Since June, the management has been negotiating with cabin crew over changes to their working conditions. These include reducing the number of cabin crew to one per aircraft, and requiring senior cabin crew to be part of the food and drink service.

According to Walsh, the airline company plans to accept about 1,000 voluntary resignation redundancy applications, and to move a further 3,000 staff into part-time contracts. This change will help reduce BA’s headcount to by 1,700 full-time staffs.

A further meeting between BA and Unite is scheduled to discuss other productivity changes and a two-year basic salary freeze that BA also would like to introduce. However, the union refused to begin new negotiations until BA drops its threat to implement the job cuts.