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BA staff on strike

07:40 / 29.07.03

British Airways are reputed to have lost 50 million due to the dispute over a new electronic signing in system and a subsequent unofficial strike by staff.

It seems quite a trivial matter to strike about. It is commonplace to electronically sign in at many workplaces. Few people could claim that arriving and leaving work at the correct time is not part of the employer-employee contract. The main argument seems to be that this data might be used in future to arrange flexible shifts where employees only come in to work at the busiest hours. BA denies that this will be the case.

This has echoes of the regular threads on Barbelith concerning id cards and the subsequent loss of freedom. Technological advance allows employers more and more supervision over workers. If the technology is only going to be used to do the same thing as the previous paper system then we invest in it? Is it worth going on strike for? If BA loses 50 million then surely this is going to have a knock on effect to staff. Is it fair that a union on one hand derides the company for miserly pay while at the same time blocks measures to increase efficiency and actively knocks a big chunk out of annual turnover?

08:34 / 29.07.03

or indeed is a company as financially stricken as BA in any kind of position to dictate terms to its employees who seem to be both willing and able to hit and hurt its cashflow...

10:23 / 29.07.03

A Guardian comment piece about this, which clarifies a few of the issues involved:

The dispute and unofficial strike by a largely female group of Heathrow workers with no record of militancy can only be understood against a wider background. BA is undergoing one of the most swinging cost-cutting programmes imposed by any UK corporation in recent years. According to the company, it will save £1.1bn a year out of its £7.2bn operating cost by March 2005. Wages account for 29% of total expenditure, so it is no surprise to discover that staff who have already waved goodbye to many colleagues now fear for their own jobs. Of the 56,000 people on BA's books a couple of years ago, 10,000 have already gone and the company hopes to shed another 3,000 by next spring. This is a cut-throat international industry that took a dive post-September 11 and has been badly hit by the Iraq war, Sars and economic downturn.

Trust between the two sides has broken down, and "social partnership" went out of the window when BA decided to impose swipecards. The female workforce, many of them mothers with young kids, fear they will lose the security of fixed shifts and flexibility to swap days with colleagues if BA has full electronic control.

Union negotiators say they have seen an inch-thick document with proposals for split shifts, sending staff home at quiet periods and calling them back when it is busy, transferring them between terminals and timing jobs down to two minutes to check in passengers. BA denies such plans, but the staff simply do not believe their managers' assurances in the current atmosphere.

It does seem to me that it's more about the corporation-led drive for a more 'flexible' workforce than swipe cards per se (where a flexible workforce is one that has the needs of the individual employees completely subjugated to the requirements of the corporation). I don't blame workers for walking out if that's thee threat that's being held over them (and I must say that in their position I wouldn't trust the managers either).

Perhaps one of the root causes of BA's problems is the over-extension of the flight industry (something which this government seems determined to further - largely, one suspects, as a result of lobbying by the air industry).

13:28 / 29.07.03

Thanks for that link KCC. One point is that it is in the interests of both employees and the company for BA to not to go bankrupt. So things like modernisation of paper based processes and flexible working patterns should surely be up for consideration.

I think it is going too far to say that any kind of flexible working means "the needs of the individual employees completely subjugated to the requirements of the corporation." The flexible hours being talked about are rumours and have been outright denied by BA itself. Swipe cards are commonplace in industry, I assume other airlines already have them, yet I can't think of any examples of nightmare shift work.

Perhaps the problem is just poor management. Forcing a new system on a workforce that has had its trust eroded by poor pay and constant job insecurity. But wouldn't a modernisation be in everyones interests? Less chance of more pay cuts and redundancies. I don't think sticking with out of date paper systems will do anyone any good.

The over-extension of the air industry is a loaded term. The competition between carriers has certainly brought prices down. Which is good for customers, new jobs have been created with the new carriers ( I wonder how this relates to the jobs lost at BA), and easy cheap travel has to be good for the economy as a whole. Then of course there is the environmental impact and effect on existing companies such as BA.