Thursday 11 March 2010

What is Unite getting out of the BA strikes?

How patriotic are Labour really?

As this Telegraph article points out, Lord mandelson was more than happy to speak out about the Kraft take-over - subject of a Unite union campaign. Yet there is silence on the BA strikes which threaten that UK owned and based company. Ian Martin as the WSJ blog has been trying to get a comment from Unite's Charlie Wheelan, but the usually locacious spin merchant is oddly silent. He is also now advising Gordon Brown on the election.

At a time of recession the contradictions for Labour could not be worse. In hock to Unite for money and funding and so staying quiet, and therefore encouraging by default, a ludicrous strike that will affect millions of voters.

The Union are way out on a limb with BA ready to break the strike and the expected numbers of particpants at 50%. Perhaps the staff are realising with nearly 3 million on the dole queue in the UK, thiss perhaps not the way forward?

5 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

The whole thing is bizarre.

If you consolidate the assets and liabilities of the company itself and its pension fund, you'd find that the whole thing is about 80% owned by their workers/future pensioners/pensioners.

Why anybody would deliberately f*** over his or her own company is a mystery to me. There's only so much they can squeeze out qua worker without losing out qua future (or indeed current) pensioner.

And with these threats of strikes, people are starting to book with other airlines to be on the safe side, thus speeding up the imminent demise of BA (or else it will be handed over to the unions, like General Motors).

Demetrius said...

If both BA and rail services foul up badly for the election campaign this could be interesting.

Anonymous said...

There's a couple of things to remember here. Firstly, trying to ascribe intelligent motives to everything that Labour and associated organisations do is silly; most of the time they're operating down at retarded-chimpanzee level and not actually thinking long-term at all.

Secondly, Mandelson doesn't have to be fully concentrated on getting an election win for Labour this time round; indeed there is every reason to suspect that he would quite like to see the death of this current Labour Party, so he can reform a New Improved Labour Party out of the wreckage of the old one, with a few changes to the constitution so that booting out stupid leaders is easier and the officers of the Party are not liable for unlimited amounts of Party debt.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Since I have to put up with BA's piss poor service I hope there is a strike; I hope Walsh breaks the strike - and I hope he sacks every last one of the miserable old hags & queens & replaces them with nice looking young gels who realise they are there for the passengers convenience & not the other way round.

I like Singapore Airlines. It's like Logans Run (except they fire all the totty when they hit 35 rather than kill 'em, thank goodness). Let's face facts: if they haven't bagged a pilot or a rich passenger by that age, they're not going to, so it's best for all concerned if they're put out to grass.

I hereby enter the competition for 2010's most sexist post.

Bill Quango MP said...

I hereby enter the competition for 2010's most sexist post.

Should have joined the QT quiz SW.
Up against some tougher opposition