The British Airlines Pilots Association (Balpa) has advised its members at British Airways (BA) to set aside £25,000 each to prepare for a long strike of at least six months to defend their pension scheme.
Balpa says it is preparing for an all out strike of its 2,822 members at BA to fight plans, expected to be announced by the end of March, to cut the cost of its main pension scheme which has a deficit of at least £900m.
A Balpa spokesman declared: ‘We will do whatever it takes to defend these pensions.’
As well as gearing up for a strike, the union has also employed a team of eight actuaries and accountants to go through the BA’s accounts, past and present, as well as its pension schemes.
A Balpa spokesman insisted his members should not pay a penny extra to bail out the fund.
He said: ‘The deficit is a debt to the fund that the company has to honour, just like a loan from a bank.
‘BA incurred the deficit, they have to meet it.’
Balpa wants to be in a position to challenge any assertion by BA that the deficit is not its fault or that it cannot afford to make extra payments to plug the hole in the scheme’s finances.
The union’s main fear is that the company may scrap final salary pensions in favour of pensions based on average salaries.
Other possibilities are to make staff pay higher contributions or work longer, in an attempt to make up the pension fund’s deficit.
Scrapping final salary pensions in favour of average salary schemes would see pilots lose tens of thousands of pounds.
As they gain experience and seniority, BA pilots often see their salaries rise from an entry level of about £25,000 to more than £100,000 in the last years of their employment.
The union is worried that some members could face a 36 per cent cut in their eventual pension.
BALPA first threatened the possibility of a strike last month.
This was in response to a BA internal campaign of around 900 briefing sessions involving 14,000 staff, to warn staff just how serious the pension scheme deficit is.
