The first step in the campaign

ABAP has agreed that the Liaison Committee chaired by Sigrid Mapp which has a meeting scheduled with Willie Walsh on 11th February 2008 will fire the first salvo in our campaign to get the unacceptable elements of the Staff Travel 2009 proposal withdrawn.

You will have your own views on the potential effectiveness of this approach given that Ms Mapp and her Committee were, apparently, the "pensioners" with whom BA "consulted" before publishing the scheme. Nevertheless the results of that meeting will give ABAP a good idea of the company's attitude and most importantly whether they have seriously thought through all the implications of their proposal or whether it was hatched up on the back of a fag packet.

Dayne Markham for the Committee of ABAP agreed that I should contact Sigrid Mapp and effectively brief her on our position - a briefing drawn up from the many messages and letters I have received on behalf of ABAP in the past few weeks.

I'm quite sure that some people will feel I have not properly reflected their specific position or view but any concerted action over a matter like this which hits different people in different ways is unlikely to completely satisfy everyone. So if you're one who feels improperly represented please accept my apologies in advance and give me your understanding if not your 100% approval.

This is the message I sent to Sigrid Mapp:

Dear Sigrid

I am webmaster of the ABAP website and the person asked by ABAP to co-ordinate the activity on the specific issue of BA's Staff Travel 2009. I understand you are meeting with Willie Walsh on 11th February 2008 and have undertaken to ABAP to raise with him the considerable outrage there is from pensioners around the world. Dayne Markham, my main contact on the ABAP committee tells me that he has passed you some numbers of people who are in touch with me directly and an estimate of those who are in touch through those people.

Since these things are changing daily let me update you. I currently have direct contacts from over 100 people. Additionally two regions of the Retired Staff Association have contacted to give us their support and others are meeting to consider doing to in the very near future.

Each pensioner obviously feels most strongly about the aspects of the proposed scheme that affects them and no-one is ignoring the fact that the proposed changes also give some pensioners small improvements in their entitlements, but there is a common thread about which everyone is upset and that is the eligibility.

Eligibility
In this respect the principal objection is the inequity of the proposed changes. Quite apart from the detail, there is no logical reason why the scheme has been adopted with any inequalities in at all. In my blog which is available for you and your colleagues to read at

http://bastafftravel.blogspot.com (Note no "www")

I draw the comparison like this; if the Chancellor announces an increase in the standard rate of income tax, we're all affected but after a few days of press fuming, we all get on with it. On the other hand, if he announces a change that will penalise the poor or advantage the rich, the action raises a reaction from the population which far outweighs the number of people actually involved.

In just the same way, by including elements which mean that some people are disadvantaged while others are not BA has made a rod for its own back. The group on which the change in eligibility impinges is typically:

- amongst the oldest former staff. Ironically those who are least likely to be using their Staff Travel privileges very much, those who are likely to be the soonest to decide that travelling, especially long-distance is not for them and those who are most likely to die sooner than most other pensioners. In other words a small and declining number of people;

- amongst those who left the airline when it was seeking a reduction in staff numbers during the late 70's, 80's and early 90's - who feel they helped the airline when they could just as well have hung on, put in their service and let the airline worry about its staff costs. These people made the decision to accept severance with four things in mind. Firstly was their chance of continued employment on the open market. Secondly, was the lump sum which the company offered them. Thirdly was a deferred pension and fourthly the restitution of the Staff Travel entitlements once they started drawing their pension. They planned their lives with these four elements in mind and are extremely angry at the company deciding at a whim to withdraw one of those elements;

- amongst those are flying crew who were obliged by law to retire from the company at 55. These people are doubly penalised by the new scheme. Compared with other ground staff not only did they retire with up to 10 years less qualification under the new scheme's eligibility, but they also qualified 10 years earlier than other staff. That means that a senior member of management could have up to 20 years more eligibility under this scheme than a member of flying crew.

Is Staff Travel a non-contractual benefit?
The company is a great pains to emphasise that it regards Staff Travel as a non-contractual benefit which can be amended or withdrawn without notice. However, this was not always so and I have copies of letters of severance to retired staff which do not make this clear at all - no mention is made of the possibility that the entitlement can be withdrawn. If the company cannot present documentation that would satisfy a court of law that Staff Travel has always been a non-contractual entitlement it cannot morally (and perhaps legally) use that as a justification for changing the rules retrospectively.

Has Staff Travel become a right by Custom and Practice?
Staff Travel has been a benefit of employment since before WW2 - I have been offered a witnessed affidavit by the elderly wife of a former BOAC manager who recalls travelling on a rebated staff ticket to see relatives in Australia in the early 1930's. I accept that Custom and Practice is a tenuous principle on which to base a logical argument. However if the custom and practice has been extant for almost as long as there has been an airline industry, the principle may be more sound.

Why make the changes retrospective at all?
The company has been disingenuous to the point of naivety in many of the things it has written to staff. In particular is the justification for taking this action. I draw your attention to the third element of my blog at the address above in which I demolish the fatuous arguments written by Clare Hatchwell, Staff Travel Manager, to a pensioner who asked her why these actions were being taken. I won't waste your time by repeating the blog here, merely ask you to read it in detail. My blog includes not merely a demolition of Ms Hatchwell's nonsense but a suggestion which would make an impact on BA's costs in running Staff Travel which would be immediate and fair - that is to limit the number of 90% subload trips any staff, former staff or interline passengers can make in one year. It wouldn't be popular with either existing or former staff - I know some of both groups who will find that irksome to say the least, but it would be fair and it would reduce the costs of Staff Travel.

A reasonable request and practical propositions.
In presenting these strongly held objections on behalf of the pensioners involved, I am not being impractical. I realise that BA wants to introduce a scheme that is as close to that it has proposed for two reasons, firstly it will lose least "face" and secondly it will mean the fewest changes to the details already published.

On behalf of the pensioners I therefore propose that BA changes the scheme in just these two respects:

1 It removes the eligibility clause for all former employees;

2 It removes the time limits placed on Banked Long Service awards;

Both proposals make no increase in the workload of Staff Travel and neither prevents BA from introducing changes that apply to existing staff only.

I hope you will be able to go to your meeting with Mr Walsh and present these points as I have made them to you. I believe them to be reasonable and fair - and anything that can achieve that qualification will find little long-term objection from the universe of former staff as a whole.

I have been charged by ABAP with communicating your responses to this message and to the meeting you have with Mr Walsh. It has been suggested to me that during the initial consultations with BA on Staff Travel you were placed under a confidentiality clause. I trust you will not be inhibited by any such clause in future but can report to us (and of course to others) in detail the not only the outcome but the detail of your meeting.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Philip Howells
Webmaster
www.abap.org.uk