Mon, Jan 29, 2007
Union, Airline Reach Agreement In Eleventh-Hour Talks
ANN REALTIME UPDATE
01.29.07 1145 EST: British Airways and the Transport &
General Workers (T&GW) union reached an agreement Monday on pay
and sick leave a scant 10 hours before an announced two-day walkout
of the airline's cabin crews was set to begin.
As ANN reported, the airline
canceled 1,300 flights last week in anticipation of the strike,
mostly from the airline's Heathrow and Gatwick hubs. Those
cancellations affected more than 150,000 passengers for Europe's
third-largest carrier.
"Unfortunately, the decision has come too late to prevent
disruption to the travel plans of tens of thousands of our
customers tomorrow and Wednesday," BA CEO Willie Walsh said in a
statement today. "We will endeavor to reinstate as many flights as
we can for those days. We will give more details later today."
Flight attendants voted overwhelming to strike on January 15
after the airline announced plans to reduce the number of senior
flight attendants on its aircraft. The union took the opportunity
to renew its objections to a new BA sick-leave policy that reduced
the number of days crews were allowed and excluded taking sick
leave for certain ailments such as stomach upsets and ear
infections.
T&GW also sought to combine two separate pay scales created
during the last strike in 1997. Workers hired after are paid on a
different scale than those hired previously.
The airline hasn't
announced details of the agreement as yet, with BA's Walsh
saying only, "Negotiations with the T&G (union) have resulted
in an agreement that removes the threat of strikes."
As ANN reported earlier
today, the talks, called off last Thursday,
restarted in earnest Sunday and continued unabated through
today. According to Bloomberg, T&GW announced the airline
agreed to combine the two pay scales and increase pay 4.6
percent this year -- an amount equal to the UK's estimated rate of
inflation.
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