Gatwick BA cabin crew face big pay cuts or redundancy
Anger as Unite union accuses British Airways of ‘holding a gun’ to employees through job restructuring
Hundreds of cabin crew at British Airways at Gatwick are being told to choose hefty pay cuts or redundancy despite the airline’s owners expecting to make more than €2.2bn (£1.6bn) in profits this year.
The most senior, longserving crew – cabin managers and pursers – were sent letters in the past few days telling them they would either have to accept new lower-paid roles as “customer service managers” by 14 September or lose their jobs on 31 October.
BA said the changes were intended to create a “sustainable and competitive” operation and that it was trying to minimise the financial impact on crew, after failing to agree a deal with their union, Unite.
Unite accused BA of “holding a gun” to employees, some of whom fear they would lose up to a quarter of their earnings under the new structure. The most senior crew, with more than 20 years’ experience, can earn £33,000, but the customer service manager salary is expected to be capped at about £24,000 before possible bonuses.
Cabin crew members who anonymously posted their stories online at the weekend claim they face pay cuts of up to £9,000 a year. Beyond their personal financial struggles, some query how the new structure would work on premium longhaul services without affecting customers.
Anger has been further stoked among staff by the timing of the changes, which come as the airline targets record profits and after the parent company IAG’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, was paid £6.4m last year. Keith Williams, the BA boss, was paid £3.9m, a 30% pay rise.
A BAspokesperson said: “We have been consulting with the cabin crew trade union for 10 months on proposed changes to senior cabin crew roles at Gatwick so that we have an operation which is sustainable, competitive and crucially ensures we will deliver a great service to our customers.”
She added: “We’ve worked hard to give cabin crew a number of options that they can choose from and to minimise any financial impact.”
A consultative ballot held by Unite saw the airline’s proposals overwhelmingly rejected.
Unite national officer Oliver Richardson said: “We’ve put forward a number of different options to BA, but instead they are ploughing on with changes. Holding a gun to senior cabin crew by saying accept the new role and a pay cut, or be made redundant, is not the way you would expect such a well-respected airline to behave.”
Crew at BA and sister company Iberia have seen significant cuts to pay and conditions in recent years. Cabin crew at BA went on strike at the turn of the decade but could not stop the creation of a new, lower-paid “mixed fleet” for new staff, while Iberia pilots and crew saw salaries and thousands of job cut, as IAG attempted to curb losses at the Spanish airline.
BA employs about 1,450 crew at Gatwick, and around 360 will be affected. The airline faces low-cost competition at Gatwick from EasyJet and Norwegian, which is attempting to undercut fares but has attracted controversy for its employment practices on its longhaul routes.
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