BA cabin crew -- I'm on their side.
I came out to Italy (atmospheric picture -- from Torre del Greco -- above) with BA and I'm going back the same way, and by the luck of the devil both these trips have avoided the cabin crew strike. Which is just in its way, as I am, more or less, on the side of the strikers.
I am sure that they are going to lose, and they have a lousy PR team compared with the BA machine. I am not even sure how much they actually earn: on the one hand you have those who claim that the average pay (including perks) comes to more than £30,000; on the other, there are the claims that the basic pay is just £11,000.
So far as I can see, comparing what different airline cabin crew earn is much like comparing the different earnings of fellows at Cambridge colleges. It proves (thanks heavens) much harder to produce a league table of salaries than you imagine. You start by observing that one college's fellows get paid a lot more for Directing Studies than another college's. Then you discover that you haven't factored in the book grants or the subsidised nursery places.
But in the case of BA you don't need to know this. You only have to travel on BA to realise that the cabin crew are not the marxisant militants that they are cracked up to be (if only!). In my experience, they are mostly middle-aged women who read the Daily Mail.
And 'middle-aged' is another give away. Where there are plenty of airlines that appear only to employ the under 25s, BA has a good number of the over 40s.That means that they have a career structure which provides a living wage for a life long career, not just a starting salary for kids who want to see the world for a few years. And it's that that Willie Walsh is trying to get rid of.
Never mind the figures on safety, I know who I would rather be flying with when the plane crash lands or the hijacker emerges from his seat (or when I have a heart attack, for that matter).
So in an ideal world, I'd like the cabin crew to win.
Meanwhile, I must confess that I am having a great time visiting Pompeii for the tv. We've done baths and brothels, sepulchres and social mobility. But I hope with a new spin.
