‘THE rest of the British Airways workforce must be called out on strike to join us in our fight to beat Walsh,’ said striking BA cabin crew member ‘Joanie’ yesterday, speaking to News Line using a pseudonym, to avoid victimisation.
There were several very lively picket lines around Heathrow Airport again, all day yesterday, with hoots of support from passing vehicles.
‘Joanie’ continued: ‘Walsh rules by fear. His behaviour is despicable. For a man at CEO level, the way he talks to his staff and the names he calls them are appalling.
‘The way he swears is inappropriate at that level.
‘He’s made it clear he has no intention of negotiating.
‘It is extremely strange, especially in the current climate, that he seems intent on driving the company into the ground.
‘It makes you question his motives.
‘It’s clearly union busting.
‘To win this, we need to get all our departments involved and rid our company of this pirate.’
‘Reginald’ was critical of the Unite union leadership.
He said: ‘They’ve had since before Christmas, since this whole thing blew up, to ballot the rest of the British Airways staff and they haven’t done it.
‘Walsh and his board have made it perfectly clear they are not interested in negotiating.
‘It would seem incredible that a company would be prepared to lose £140 million when we were allegedly only £10 million apart from an agreement.
‘So it just proves our point that it’s the union they are after.
‘They want to crush BASSA as a first step to crushing Unite.’
‘Graham’ said: ‘None of us wanted a prolonged strike, but as it’s gone on people are beginning to realise that this is just stage one.
‘If he crushes BASSA, then he’ll move straight on the pilots and the ground staff.
‘I know for a fact that a lot of the pilots really do support us and they despise what some pilots are doing, which is acting as “scabbing crew’’.’
‘Adriana’ said: ‘What happens to our plight is very significant for the other workers in this company.
‘We’ve made it clear we’re prepared to help out like we did after 9/11, but we’re not prepared to pay for the incompetence of the upper echelons of management.
‘For example, £500 million lost for fuel hedging at the wrong price, £270 million in fines because of the collusion and price-fixing between Virgin and BA, and £150 million for the cost of opening Terminal 5 when it wasn’t ready.’
‘Jonathan’ said: ‘There are talks about getting BALPA (the pilots union) expelled from the TUC for allowing their members to be used as strike breakers against another TUC union.’
