On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 23:29:15 +0100, Andy Hall
wrote:

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 23:00:25 +0100, Peter Parry
wrote:

They are all related, a point that passed the dimwits at BA by by a
very wide margin.

It's a customer/supplier relationship, with BA being the customer of
the catering firm - separate companies.

BA used to own the catering company and off loaded it (complete with
TUPE) to another firm, that firm in turn off loaded it (at a nice
profit) to the current owners who of course had to recover the price
they had paid for it. At the same time BA were screwing the company
into the ground on price as BA accounted for well over half their UK
turnover.

Therefore what possible
relevance does the employment terms and conditions of the caterer's
staff have to the employees of their customer? That's a nonsense.

The point all the bozos with MBA's missed was that at Heathrow whole
families work there and have for years. The catering staff were
wives, cousins, sisters etc of the baggage handlers and when they
went on strike they didn't find it too difficult to persuade other
family members to join in.

BA have so little idea about, or interest in, who works for them
(apparently they are busy re-designing the design on tail fins) that
this simple relationship and the effect it might have simply didn't
occur to them.

According to the BA person I was talking to today they had calculated
that by off loading the catering (and other) services they would
reduce the probability of the follow on strikes they have seen before
and the last few days has caught them completely flat footed.

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/