British Airways strike: ‘It’s like working for North Korean Airlines’ say BA mixed fleet cabin crew

Mixed Fleet staff are unhappy about a wide range of employment issues, from pay to 'sanctions'

Were it not for the noise, Bedfont Lane would be an unremarkable outer-suburban thoroughfare in the far west of London. But every minute or two a plane roars overhead on the final approach to the southern runway at Heathrow, close enough for the observer to read its registration.

This week, planespotters here have been rewarded with what ornithologists call vagrants: species that are far away from their familiar territory. Because between 1 and 16 July, British Airways is borrowing nine short-haul Airbus A320 jets, plus pilots and cabin crew, from Qatar Airways.

The “wet-leased” aircraft are operating around 30 domestic and European flights a day, covering for flights grounded by an unprecedented 16-day strike by some BA cabin crew belonging to the Unite union.

Some passengers have declared themselves delighted with the substitution, which brings greater comfort plus free food and drink in economy class. But the strikers and their union representatives are furious.

I met them a few hundred yards further along Bedfont Lane at the Bedfont FC clubhouse. The “Home of the Eagles” is also the traditional strike HQ for the traditional disputes between British Airways cabin crew and management.

In 2010, I listened as the top brass of the Unite union urged on strikers in a long, bitter dispute over cost-cutting. BA’s then-chief executive, Willie Walsh, said that the airline faced ferocious competition in Europe and beyond, and could no longer afford the generous pay and conditions that cabin crew enjoyed.

The key element of the eventual settlement was the establishment of a new cabin crew unit, Mixed Fleet. Every new Heathrow cabin crew member since 2010 has been recruited into Mixed Fleet, with inferior terms to longer-serving staff.

In time, Mixed Fleet will eventually replace the “legacy” teams of Eurofleet and Worldwide. Until that happens, two or three decades from now, old and new never work together on the same flight. Which, given the discrepancy in pay and conditions, is probably wise.

“We’re not second class cabin crew,” one female striker told me. “We do our job as well as Eurofleet and Worldwide. Why shouldn’t I get what the others get?

“I’m required to live within a two-hour radius of Heathrow. I can't buy anywhere with the money I’m on. When I go and ask for a mortgage, they laugh at me."

The P60 that she showed me indicated she had earned less than £20,000 last year. “I’ve been at British Airways for six years, and I’ve never entered the sickness process,” she said.

(PA (PA)

A male colleague said that he earned more on a zero-hours contract with Ryanair. His P60 showed income for the year at under £18,000.

British Airways maintains that no full-time Mixed Fleet staff earned less than £21,000 last year. This includes a £3 per hour flying allowance, payable while they are on duty, but which has to cover meals “downroute”. The slump in sterling has pushed up the cost of dining out at almost all Mixed Fleet long-haul destinations.

“Mixed Fleet cabin crew's pay and rewards is in line with cabin crew at our competitor airlines,” said a BA spokesperson.

“New cabin crew in their first year working full time at British Airways will receive more than £21,000 based on pay, allowances, incentive and bonus.

“We have offered Unite an independent audit of pay, which it has declined.”

What the union calls “poverty pay” was at the root of a dispute that began last year, and has seen 26 days of industrial action in the first half of 2017.

The local MP and Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, called in to Bedfont FC one morning earlier in the year to lend his support, and observed that they were the first strikers he had met who fixed their make-up before joining the picket line.

Since then the two sides have reached an agreement on pay. The current strike is about what Unite says are 'sanctions' against 1,400 union members who have previously gone on strike; BA calls them 'consequences'.

Cabin crew say the pay deal comes with unacceptable strings attached: the loss of bonuses and travel concessions for a further year, as punishment for those who go on strike. They must also, say strikers, agree not to carry yellow pens or other yellow symbols. That might sound random, but yellow symbolises to other crew that they are strikers.

“It’s like working for North Korean Airlines,” said a female cabin crew member. “They’re handing us a surrender document.”

(For the avoidance of doubt, British Airways has no connection with the North Korean national carrier, Air Koryo, which has been judged the world's worst airline.)

Outside, the procession of inbound planes is unrelenting - which, for a group of workers intent on grounding aircraft, must be demoralising. In previous strikes, around 1,400 cabin crew have gone on strike, about a quarter of the Mixed Fleet total. This stoppage appears to involve about the same proportion.

Change gear: a Qatar Airways Airbus A320 in Brussels, preparing to fly to Heathrow for British Airways (Hazel Gulliver)

Today, BA's only strike-hit departures are long-haul services to Doha, Jeddah and Lagos; arrivals from Doha, New York and Dubai are also axed because the corresponding outbound flights did not operate yesterday.

BA says it intends to operate 99.5 per cent of its schedule during the strike. Minor incidents such as the false fire alarm at Heathrow's Terminal 3 yesterday and a security alert at Manchester today seem to be having almost as much impact as the industrial action.

But the strikers say stopping work is having a deeper effect: undermining confidence in the airline, and causing a decline in service standards when fewer than the normal complement of staff are crewing a flight.

Both sides have dug in.

BA insists: “We have set out the consequences for crew if they take strike action. The purposes of these consequences are to encourage crew to come to work.”

The airline has drafted in staff working in other parts of the airline who are trained as cabin crew, and put in place “a range of measures to support our Mixed Fleet cabin crew who are reporting to work as normal”.

The strikers say these are needless and expensive steps, apparently intended to ease concerns about possible intimidation: paying for taxis to work and even a £30 allowance for toiletries to be bought “downroute”, so that cabin crew need not check in a bag.

Strikers mounted a protest at Qatar Airways UK headquarters in west London, claiming that the crew of the wet-leased planes would be locked up if they went on strike. The state-owned Qatari airline owns 20 per cent of BA's parent company, IAG - whose chief executive is Willie Walsh.

The striking cabin crew would normally be serving Marks & Spencer food and drink. Instead, they handed out flyers asserting that Marks & Spencer staff in stores earn more than British Airways Mixed Fleet cabin crew selling the same stuff at 30,000 feet, and urging the public to email the chief executives of both BA and M&S.

Another Unite leaflet read: “BA should pay their frontline staff a decent living wage, not one that sees many of us sleeping in cars between flights because we cannot afford the petrol to get home, or taking on second or third jobs on our few rest days.”

British Airways firmly refutes the assertion that staff are not paid a living wage, saying: “The reward package for Mixed Fleet is undoubtedly attractive. Since the start of 2017, we have received 17,210 applications for jobs in Mixed Fleet.”

As I prepared to leave Bedfont FC, a Qatar Airways jet was flying in from Lyon. While the passengers enjoyed a little bit of extra comfort, the cabin crew who might have been working the flight were defiant, and asked me to relay a message to BA passengers.

“If you’re travelling with British Airways you’d like to know that the crew member didn’t sleep in their car and was able to afford some breakfast.

“You want a premium airline? You need well-paid, premium staff.”