BA Wants You to Work For Free
 

My god. Why didn't anyone else think of this? Think of how much money airlines could make if they were non-profit, volunteer operations!

The CEO will even take a month off pay! Oh . . but that's after he takes his raise after overseeing record losses. Let's not go crazy here!

Seriously . . if this is the best the CEO can come up with, it's time for the business to close it's doors.

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British Airways asks staff to work for free - Times Online
British Airways asks staff to work for free



British Airways has asked its 40,000 staff to work without pay for up to a month as the ailing airline seeks to cut costs.
The group, which made a record £401 million loss in 2008 amid surging fuel prices and a collapse in premium-fare passengers, is seeking to reduce costs dramatically and has already offered staff unpaid leave or a reduction in hours.



Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, has now gone a step further by asking staff to volunteer for between one and four weeks of unpaid work in what he says is a “fight for survival.”



Mr Walsh, who said last week that he would work for free in July, has set a deadline of June 24 for employees to volunteer for unpaid work. He said that the salary deductions would be spread over three to six months wherever possible.
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BA denied that those staff who volunteered for unpaid work would be given preference if the airline imposes a further round of redundancies.
The airline is currently negotiating pay deals and job reductions with its ground handling staff, pilots and cabin crew, who have been told that the airline needs to settle discussions by the end of the month. In total, BA is thought to be seeking as many as 4,000 job cuts, including 2,000 voluntary redundancies among the 14,000 cabin crew.


Last week it emerged that BA pays its cabin crew and pilots up to twice as much as rival airlines. The average salary for BA’s 14,000 cabin crew, including bonuses and allowances, is £29,900, compared with £14,400 at Virgin Atlantic and £20,200 at easyJet. BA’s pilots earn an average of £107,600, compared with £89,500 at Virgin and £71,400 at easyJet.
The request for volunteers to work for free was made in the company’s BA news magazine. In an article headlined Action Time, Mr Walsh wrote: “I am looking for every single part of the company to take part in some way. It really counts. We face a fight for survival. These are the toughest trading conditions we have ever seen and there simply are no green shoots.
“Our survival depends on everyone contributing to changes that permanently remove costs from every part of the business,” he added.

It'd be easier to take this request if the average FA made $48,864 (more than most regional FO's here in the US!) and the average pilot made $175,845 (more than most mainline CA's here in the US, and that's BA's average, which includes their FO's).

Bump up average pay to $176K @ our airlines ($211K for the average CA and $140K for the average FO) and you'd have a lot more volunteers here in the US. UPS just went through this, in fact. Many there took voluntary cuts to prevent a furlough. Of course, they are close to BA's #'s too.:cool:

Amen. If I was making 140-150K in the right seat I might think about working a month for a buck. But I would want it in writing to make it back.
As it stands now most FO's are below 100K and the senior ones are lucky to see 120K.
Most 767A's that I fly with are lucky to see 165K a year. That is working 80 some hrs a month!

Most European FO's make about 140EU a year and CA's make about 180-190K EU a year.

With all of these joint ventures we are the ones that will be driving their wages down, not the other way around.

That's nothing new. Didn't Sun Country ask for a 50% pay deferral last winter?

British Airways. Work for free.
 

BA is asking their pilots to work for free. How long do you think it will be until some of the regional carriers here try to do the same thing.


British Airways asks employees to work without pay - Yahoo! Finance

Either..

a) This is a foreign airline story you wanted to post in the regional section so you needed a "regional" theme to the thread.

or

b) You are high

Too funny.

The difference is that the "chief" probably has loads of stock in the company and other ways of making income upon the success of the company. Whereas, the labor does not - perhaps some own some shares.

never gonna happen!

Why is everyone up in arms about this. It's less than a 10% paycut for the year and they don't have to fight to get their pay back. If they continue to come back and ask for more money then that is something else. If they don't then it was only about a 10% paycut for the year.

That's a much better deal than what the U.S. carriers have all given up.

They just worded it differently. When you say it like that, it's a hell of a lot better than the terminated pensions and lost 40% of our salary that we will never get back.