BA calls up 5,000 strike-breakers

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Times Online (UK)



Maurice Chittenden

BRITISH AIRWAYS is training 5,000 more staff to work as cabin crew after it claimed victory in the first round of its bitter industrial dispute yesterday.

The airline said it put almost 50,000 passengers into the skies in the first 24 hours of the strike. Many were served tea and sandwiches from trolleys by off-duty pilots and engineering staff, part of a volunteer force of 1,030 BA workers scrambled to help those who refused to join the strike.

BA claimed it was operating 60% of its scheduled flights. The airline said that by last night more cabin crew had turned up than expected — 1,157 out of the 1,700 due to work, including 97% of Gatwick crews — and the numbers were “above the levels needed to operate our published schedule”. Plans were under way last night to reopen previously cancelled flights to Los Angeles, Miami, Cape Town and Johannesburg.

However, Unite, the union involved, claimed 60% of flights had not gone ahead and that Heathrow was “becoming like a car park for planes”. It said a flight to Abu Dhabi had six pilots, four of whom were helping to serve passengers.


Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7069780.ece

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British Airways planes on the tarmac at Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport, Middlesex, after it was announced that British Airways has launched legal action in a bid to halt a planned 12-day strike by its cabin crew, which threatens travel chaos for a million passengers from next week. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday December 15, 2009. The airline said its move was aimed at protecting its customers from the 'massive stress and disruption' threatened by Unite's decision to call a walkout from December 22 to January 2. See PA story INDUSTRY BA. Photo credit should read: Steve Parsons/PA Wire

[Brickbat]

1. "Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab."

NO SCABS!

Quote from Jack London

[Bluzmann57]

2. Well, I won't fly on that airline

The scabs will no doubt be nowhere near as qualified as the Union people they are replacing. And that could endanger lives.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. A dirty four letter word at my house growing up.

SCAB.

Child of an organizer in the Depression for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' Union here.
Every time Dad got called a Communist, he figured he was doing something right.