BA strike leader calls for new talks
The leader of striking British Airways cabin crew made a fresh appeal today for talks to end their dispute, which he said had cost the airline tens of millions of pounds.
Tony Woodley, joint leader of Unite, also mounted another attack on the company for trying to "browbeat" its staff into accepting worse pay and conditions.
Mr Woodley, addressing a rally of striking union members at a football ground near Heathrow airport, said it was the "economics of the madhouse" for BA to be spending money on contingency plans to deal with a three-day strike by thousands of cabin crew, which ends at midnight tonight, rather than seeking to resolve a bitter row over cost-cutting.
The dispute is costing BA tens of millions of pounds, with flights leaving empty of passengers and aircraft being leased from other firms at an estimated cost of £300,000 (€333,600) a time, he claimed.
He said: "The economics of the madhouse should now be put to one side. We need to reach a sensible, fair deal, to get this company up and running again, to get passengers flying again, to get all of the planes off the ground."
Mr Woodley, who has appealed to the BA chairman and "sensible" members of the board to intervene in the row, said the dispute was "extremely serious", adding that the only way to resolve it was for negotiations to resume.
It is understood that Mr Woodley has contacted TUC general secretary Brendan Barber about restarting talks which collapsed last week after BA tabled an offer Unite complained was worse than a previous one, which they could not recommend or even put to members.
To cheers from striking cabin crew, Mr Woodley said: "It is important to remain strong and determined to get a settlement you know is fair. Keep your heads up."
Mr Woodley said BA chief executive Willie Walsh should ask himself why dedicated staff with up to 35 years of service found they had "no alternative" to taking strike action.
He said of BA: "They don't want to negotiate. They want to beat you and this union into submission. They want us to capitulate, but we are not going to do that.
"We have a company in some difficulty here and it needs to change. There is not a man or woman who doesn't understand this industry."
He said that is why the union offered £55m (€61.16m)-worth of savings to try to be helpful, "but they were not satisfied. They wanted more and more and more".
Mr Woodley said pay, time off and other arrangements for existing staff had to be protected in any eventual deal.
Business group London First, whose members include many of London's internationally-based businesses, said the capital's reputation as a centre for global trade was being damaged by the strike.
Chief executive Baroness Valentine said: "Despite the best efforts of BA management and many staff to continue to put the interests of passengers first, the strike is reminiscent of a best-forgotten era.
"The message from BA's London-based business customers to both sides is: Get back to the negotiating table, and to union members: Get back to work in the meantime."
Striking staff seemed in a buoyant mood at the football club, many booing BA flights as they passed overhead and joining in chants aimed at Mr Walsh of: "Willie, Willie, Willie - out, out, out."
One also held a placard mocking the airline's famous slogan, which read: "The world's favourite picket line."
Meanwhile, at Heathrow's Terminal Five, disgruntled passengers faced further frustrations.
German couple Carolin and Stefan Marquardt were stuck in the terminal building for seven hours waiting for a flight home to Stuttgart - having cut short their holiday to India by a night.
Mrs Marquardt, 26, said: "Both the flight from Bangalore to London and the flight from London to Stuttgart were cancelled.
"We had to take a flight last night instead, meaning we lost one night of our holiday. We arrived here at 6.30am but our flight isn't until 1.40pm.
"I've been stressed by it all. It's not a very nice end to our vacation.
"We haven't had any sleep and were told a hotel would only be available here at noon, which is no good.
"I understand both sides of the disagreement, but it's bad for people like us."
A BA spokesman said later that the airline's contingency plans were continuing to work well around the world, adding: "We are operating our planned schedule of departures at Heathrow and Gatwick and we have been able to add flights into our schedule at both airports over the weekend as well as today.
"We continue to operate across the world to almost 120 different destinations and are continuing to add in extra cities, due to the numbers of crew reporting for work.
"Customers can check on our website and book on to any additional flights in our schedule. Our charter operators are also continuing to work well and are integrating with our own short-haul flying schedules at Heathrow and Gatwick.
"Today, cabin crew are continuing to report as normal at Gatwick, and Heathrow levels remain above what we need to operate our published schedule. We continue to offer the fullest support to our cabin crew who want to work as normal.
"All of our flights at London City remain unaffected. The vast majority of flights for the remainder of this week will operate as normal and customers will be able to travel as planned.
"The knock-on impact is far less than anticipated due to the numbers of cabin crew who came to work as normal over the past weekend."
Unite continued to give a different version of the impact of the strike, claiming that some aircraft had left Heathrow with their blinds down to hide the fact that few, if any, passengers were on board.
