God REALLY doesn't like union busters

[fpb]

An enormous volcanic explosion has shut down the whole airspace over Britain and Ireland. Every air company in the world is going to lose money. But British Airways, unlike most other companies, have just wasted millions upon millions of pounds on a savage union-busting campaign disguised as a strike. And now they will find themselves further millions out of pocket, worse than most because they are based in Britain. As I said on another occasion: payback may be a bitch, but she tastes sweet as honey.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Basically, BA has a tradition of macho management that has never done it any good but that they seem unwilling to ditch. The latest manifestation was the attempt to cut the wages of their personnel by up to 40%, which inevitably resulted in a strike. Using union-busting Thatcher-age legislation, BA found a judicial hit-man who decided that because a few people who had voted in the ballot were no longer working for BA, the ballot was invalid (a stunt that is designed to make any ballot invalid). Willie Walsh repeatedly shifted his ground in negotiation, broke agreements already reached, and did everything in his power to embitter the situation, which was still hanging fire when the volcano exploded this morning. BA may now come close to bankruptcy, but the macho filth that lead the company would deserve it. And as they already intended to ruin, and probably replace, their workforce, I can't even say that if BA went down it would be bad for its employees.

I hate macho management and union-busting. One of the things that first showed me that Blair was rotten to the core was that, once elected, he did nothing to roll back the Thatcher-age anti-union legislation. I don't say abolish it, becaue any reasonable person would accept that British unions in the seventies had gone quite mad and needed being forced into reason; but to leave union members exposed to the sort of treatment Walsh and co. are handing out to them means to stab your constituents in the back just to please Rupert Murdoch and a few other villains.