BA crew talk about strikes
THOUSANDS of British Airways’ (BA) cabin crew are meeting at racecourse Sandown park this morning to discuss a winter walkout at the airline.
The meeting comes ahead of BA’s financial results for the summer season, which analysts are expecting to be catastrophic, as the downturn pummels airlines.
The ailing carrier, led by chief executive Willie Walsh, is set to report a £252m pre-tax loss on Friday, as it faces its second consecutive loss for the first time since
it was privatised in the 1980s. In a bid to cut costs, BA is freezing pay and axing staff through voluntary redundancies.
But the moves have left unions reeling, and Unite is taking legal action in the High Court against the imposition of new contracts, and is gauging appetite for a strike.
The union said on Friday that it had started proceedings at the High Court for an injunction against BA imposing new pay and conditions on workers from 16 November.
“BA is changing people’s contracts and they are doing it in a unilateral way,” Unite said. “We want to demonstrate that in the matter of contractual changes they are breaking the law.”
BA says that the changes did not alter contractual terms and conditions for individual crew members.