Unsafe at any altitude

It’s puckish timing that, immediately upon the news of a British Airways computer programmer’s arrest on charges that he’d planned to use cabin crew strikes to facilitate bombing an aircraft in flight, we receive news that BA cabin crew have voted to strike, starting 20March—a week hence.

The British style of labor actions appears to be short spurts of high-volume strikes interspersed with intervals of rather sullen showing up for work & going through the motions. (Kind of like auto-erotic strangulation which I see on many episodes of Law & Order: SVU. Tighten the noose, loosen it; repeat. The trick is to release before the participant actually dies.)

This latest follows that pattern: on strike for three days starting 20 March; four days from 27 March; no strike over Easter (because that would really piss off the leisure traveling public whose wrath would be directed at labor, not management); but possible further action after 14 April if BA haven’t caved by then.

There’s the usual pompous posturing on both sides; basically a whizzing contest between BA & Unite management. You hear the same in any dispute involving Unite; their leadership have a single script & they emote the hell out of it. PM Gordon Brown has stepped in to wring his hands & tsk-tsk the two parties, but no indication that anyone wants to actually make progress.

The union’s timing is definitely well-chosen: announcement that they’re screwing up flight schedules so soon that people won’t have much of a chance of rescheduling on airlines that aren’t constantly mired in revolving labor disputes. Plus a lot of money will be lost on cancellation penalties. This is what the Unite union had planned for December until British courts tossed out their strike vote because they were calling in ballots from Chicago graveyards.

I’m certainly no fan of Willie Walsh & the management of BA; they’re right up there with United & Continental as 20th Century businesses that haven’t sussed out this whole 21st Century model. (They remind me of generals in the First World War who just didn't get the impact of entrenched machine guns & heavy artillery on frontal assaults.)

But the union is even further into cloud-cuckoo land. They don’t seem to realize that this economy isn’t the one of 50 years ago, when labor could posture & threaten & walk away with huge gains. & they don’t seem to notice that other unions, like the UAW, have agreed to cutbacks of all sorts in order to keep their employers viable &, you know, employing them.

There’s one more worry for the flying public: if you happen to get on a BA flight that hasn’t been cancelled, how will you know that your substitute cabin crew isn’t an Al Qaeda cell?