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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
British Airways pilots began a 48-hour strike on Monday, grounding most of the airline's flights and disrupting thousands of travelers' plans in unprecedented industrial action over a pay dispute.
The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) last month gave the airline notice of three days of industrial action in September, in what is the first ever strike by BA pilots.
Following the strikes on Sept. 9 and 10, another day of industrial action is scheduled for Sept. 27.
BALPA has said that British Airways (BA) should share more of its profits with its pilots. BA has said the strike action is unjustifiable as its pay offer was fair.
Thousands of customers have had to seek alternative travel arrangements, and the airline has come in for criticism over how it handled communications with passengers ahead of the strikes.
"This strike will have cost the company considerably more than the investment needed to settle this dispute," BALPA General Secretary Brian Strutton said in a statement on the eve of the strike.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:37AM (4 children)
> BALPA [..] gave the airline notice of three days of industrial action in September
That's very short notice. Intentionally to stop BA from being able to mitigate the damage?
> This strike will have cost the company considerably more than the investment needed to settle this dispute
Nice airline you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it. Cheaper to pay the protection money than deal with the damage, right?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Akemi Homura on Thursday September 12 2019, @10:45PM (1 child)
Why do you consider it only a Mafia-like protection racket when workers do it? They may have legitimate grievances. Hierarchical entities are pyramidal. If the capstone thinks its lofty position is a result of levitation rather than support from below, revolt at ground level may be what is required to provide a sorely needed reality check.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @10:51AM
> Why do you consider it only a Mafia-like protection racket when workers do it?
Just because I point out the parallels in the situation this particular discussion is about, doesn't mean it's the only time I think such parallels happen.
If someone tells you that a particular box is red, do you think that they consider all boxes to be red?
As to why that concept came to mind in the first place, it was just the quote from the Union GS in the summary.
It was not about addressing grievance, but about how *they* caused more cost to BA more than BA doing what they were requesting.
That just made me think of protection racket (or Dane-geld), which operates on exactly that concept (if you don't pay the cost being asked, a higher cost will be caused by the asker).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @08:30AM (1 child)
You are very wrong, announced 23 august. https://www.balpa.org/Media-Centre/Press-Releases/BA-pilots-to-strike-in-September [balpa.org]
Considering this article: https://londonairtravel.com/2019/07/31/british-airways-balpa-strike-court-of-appeal/ [londonairtravel.com] BA knew strikes were coming from at least July already. They even had two rounds of legal action to try and stop it. The BALPA union apparently even had a vote on weather to go to strike or not.
When people go on strike, it's not the first thing they do. It's a consequence of long term grievances that are not being addressed by upper management.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @10:53AM
> You are very wrong
Thanks for the correction, was commenting based on the summary, which said they only gave 3 days notice.