To really have no respect for people who strike..

[stealthpony]

...when it has the potential to cause so much public disruption?

I don't give a bollock what they're striking about. I've had a weekend away planned for months. Imagine if it's your wedding abroad or a funeral or a holiday you'd worked fucking hard at on minimum wage all year to get? It could be for any reason but striking airport staff will stop all of your plans and you go nowhere.

AIBU to think that THEY are the unreasonable ones or can someone please explain to me why I should be on their side?

So let me get this straight - you work all year and save your minimum wages to go away
So how come you don't work for less than £5.80 an hour then?

or did you not care when people went on strike to get you - yes you better working conditions

I am appalled OP. I really am. It is called DEMOCRACY. Welcome to the civilised world.

Missmoopy I disagree. in the BA strikes not all cabin crew were members of the Union, not all members voted in the strike ballot but because the number that did vote and wanted to strike was over the required number that meant the strike went ahead! how is that a democracy, a good number of cabin crew did not want to strike so didn't but there was a ripple effect of the union members who did want to strike.

That to me smacks of you only listen to the voters and not the abstainers, or cabin crew as a whole. IMO those union members who are going out on strike will eventually end up costing BA to shed more jobs as a result. I can only hope it is those who went out on strike who go first.

If you knew anything at all about UNITE you would know that 'civilised' is not a word you can use in the same sentence. I am a member of a civilised union, and my work colleagues are having to deal sensitively at work atm with intimidation brought about by some UNITE members of other cabin crew who are not UNITE members. My civilised union has negotiated with BA for one of the bet deals in the industry - unfortunately that has involved taking paycuts, cuts to our pensions, increases in our retirement age, increases in the number of hours at work, among many other concessions we have made because of the current working climate. It has all been dealt with in a civilised way. Many other groups of staff have had the same civilised discussions with BA and come to similar levels of cuts to what are - let's face it - reasonably generous T&Cs to start with.

The BASSA arm of UNITE were the only unionised group of staff within BA who did not enter into any civilised discussions or negotiations at all. They CHOSE to ignore BA's requests for discussions in the vain hope that the recession would pass, the price of oil would fall, and premium passengers would once again flock to BA, and there would be no need for them to contribute to the savings that the rest of the company had contributed to. Sadly, as a result of this entirely uncivilised behaviour there is going to be a much greater need for cost cutting now.

Just because a group of workers is entitled to professional union representation, and is entitled to withhold their labour, does not make it civilised to withhold their labour for what in the grand scheme of things are trivial issues. A small payrise may be a frustration and an annoyance, but does not equate to undemocratic way of dealing with a difficult financial climate. To put it bluntly - civility and democracy does not equal 'strike.'

Just re-reading my post above - I don't think I made the point strongly enough that the climate of fear and intimidation that is currently pervading at the moment is as a result of the actions (direct and indirect) of UNITE members. There are changes to the working atmosphere that have led to a breakdown in teamwork that has been steadily growing over the years, recently collapsing into a mess of a working environment, that have been brought about by the militancy of UNITE. I cannot reiterate strongly enough that the is nothing civilised about them as a union - and believe me, 36000ft up over the Atlantic in the middle of the night is not a place you want to have your airline crew suffering a breakdown in the team as a result of advice to some of them by their union.

Completely agree with purplewednesday.

As a nurse and a midwife in the nhs, our working conditions are shit.

Should we strike or look for another job??

I see the put up and shut up crew are out in force, as they often are on these threads.

Annoying as it it may be to some who think workers should do as they are told, this is a democracy and people have the right to strike. There seems to be an attitude of "well I have too put up with crappy working conditions so how dare others say they won't and stand up for themselves " which is rather odd.

Sounds like divide and rule to me. Keep people bickering amongst themselves so they don't notice what else we're doing. Seems to be working too judging by most of the posts on here

Janos It's less about put up and shut up. Is it ok for people from one company to make decisions that would result in other people from other companies losing out on a day (or more) without pay?

Eg. airline staff and retail staff within the airports.

Bearing in mind that those who will lose pay are the ones on hourly rates - which usually aren't too far off minimum wage.

The point of strikes is to cause disruption basically telling their management that without them this is what would happen and they deserve whatever it is they are striking for.

Strikes are normally done as the last resort after long discussions etc on the problem. They also give notice of the dates it will take place and what it will affect normally a few weeks in advance.

Yes it can be annoying but it is also necessary otherwise people would just work in whatever conditions their employer wants and that i can say is probably not a good thing at all.

However they must be careful because strikes can backfire and can lead to the general public no longer using that service leading to redundancies which i assume is counter productive

YABU

Backinthebox, thank you for the inside story on the Unite/BAA strike.

Not all strikes are reasonable and not all unions act in their members' best interests.

Sammyuni what I believe I have tried to explain is that though I know less about the UNITE-BAA issues, I know for an absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt fact that the only union to launch industrial action against BA in the last 12 months was the ONLY union who did NOT enter any discussions or negotiations with the company. All of the other unions who sent officials to negotiate and discuss ended up settling without resorting to industrial action. What do this say to you about UNITE? To me it says that they are spectacularly uneffective as a negotiating body. Many of the other unions have managed to negotiate a less bad than expected paycut/productivity rise combined with a bonus or a shares award once BA returns to profit. UNITE have managed to allow a situation to arise whereby their members are villified by the public and their members have lost a valuable perk. Finally, a whole new, much less generous pay structure has been introduced for ALL future new recruits to BA cabin crew. (I should point out that these poor new recruits will only get paid 10% more than the going market rate for cabin crew in the UK instead of the much higher rates that current employees are paid.) What I am trying to say is that I have the facts in this particular case - and not all industrial is as a result of failure of negotiations.

Well if UNITE did not even go to the negotiation table to discuss first than a strike in their case was irresponsible and rash.

Phew! That's exactly what I have been trying to say!

Janos going back to the BA example, the cabin crew got what they wanted in terms of a pay deal but as they had a 'perk' taken away they are still not satisfied and will no doubt go out on strike again. It is not in their T&Cs that they get the perk and they were warned that they would lose it if they went out on strike again. They persisted and they lost it, so why is it acceptable for them to go out on strike?
They are costing BA huge amounts of money and the only ones who will win out of this are the union twats who will rake in the subscriptions.

Strikes are not the answer, and given they are still the best paid cabin crew and have the best package if they don't like it they should f**k off to another airline and let those who want to work for BA for them.

I have no respect for Unite and their tactics and as soon as you hear that they are involved in the BAA issue you can't help but think that they are up to no good again.