Compromise

[tobyaw]

Watching the BBC News coverage of the BA/Unite legal action, it struck me that the BBC’s correspondents seemed to be espousing compromise as the only sensible path for BA and Unite to follow, and they emphasised that ACAS was ready to provide arbitration facilities. Maybe this is an editorial line that fits easily into the BBC’s centrist ethos, but it strikes me that it is hard to justify.

BA is a loss-making airline with a pension deficit that is nearly double its market capitalisation. It pretty obviously needs to make some tough decisions in order to resolve its financial problems, just as our LibCon government is going to need to do with the nation’s finances.

But if any changes an organisation tries to make are met with hostility, and end up being curtailed through a process of compromise, then presumably the implication is that the organisation should adopt a more extreme position initially, so they get the result they want after the compromise. This might be second-nature for those who spend their lives negotiating, but I want to believe that a business can and should be run in a way that involves practical business-led decision making, with an honest presentation of its position. Maybe it isn’t possible in a heavily unionised business; how can a company have a relationship with its employees if there is a third-party organisation in the middle?

Comments

[tobyaw]

But BA isn’t run by and for the benefit of its employees — very few companies are (John Lewis being a notable exception, I suppose). Unite don’t appear to have either the short- or long-term future of the business in mind; all they seem to care about is preserving existing working conditions and perks for a subset of the BA workforce.

With roughly 90% of cabin crew being union members, 79% of ballots were returned, with 81% in favour of a strike. Which means that roughly 58% of cabin crew voted in favour of striking.

I imagine the working environment will be pretty unpleasant, before, during, and after the strike, with people on opposing sides of the picket line having to work together in an enclosed space.

[hobbitomm.livejournal.com]

ON the flip side, with 90% of the cabin crew being union members, 79% of ballots returned (which is a _really_ good turnout, incidentally), and 19% against, only 13.5% of the Cabin crew expressed an active opposition to striking.

That's still an overwealming mandate to strike. I think you have to wonder (given other Airlines aren't having the same problems) whether BA has set out to deliberately antagonise their union, or whether they've done it through gross incompetence. I certainly think this sort of dispute isn't in anyones interest- you just have to wonder how it can have reached this sort of level. Hard line attitudes on both sides, one assumes.

[tobyaw]

Or perhaps other airlines don't have this problem because they don't have the history - stretching back to the days of state-ownership - of compromising with the unions, and hence developing the high-cost working practices and salaries that are out of kilter with the rest of the industry.

I can't imagine that BA's goal could have been to deliberately antagonise Unite; rather, I suspect they came to a realisation that the only way they can recover the business is to break free from the status quo. When you're losing hundreds of millions of pounds a year, compromise is no longer an option.

[hobbitomm.livejournal.com]

You don't think it was in the nature of 'We must break the Unions power'? I can see that being one of the objectives of someone trying one way of reducing costs. I don't think it's been handled well, and personally I think you can get more by negotiating than by the sort of heavy handed stuff that's been pulled so far (the injunctions, in particular, had a distinct smell of 'gamesmanship' rather than justice about 'em- which was the essence of the Judges remarks last week, iirc).

[tobyaw]

Yep, absolutely. I think there is a strong correlation between breaking union power and stopping a business from failing.