The 24-hour rolling news syndrome

Sometimes campaigns like that ABAP’s Staff Travel Working Group is engaged on seem to have lost momentum, to be drifting or be losing direction. It is what can be called the 24 hour rolling news syndrome. In this syndrome a relationship is formed between the ease or speed of communication and the need for news to fill the space created by that speed. Radio 5 in the UK is probably the classic example.

Created effectively on Radio 4 FM during the first Gulf war, the end of that conflict showed the problem in stark reality and were the BBC not publicly funded but had to earn its revenues there is little doubt that Radio 5 would never have existed. In fact, once the conflict was finished most people were content to return to their traditional news sources but the BBC decided that it would extend its taxpayer-funded empire and established a permanent 24-hour, rolling news station on AM, taking over frequencies formerly used by regional radio services. At once it was clear that without a war to report by the minute, news itself was not enough to hold the listener and Radio 5 added sport, and longer interviews. Ten years later the extent to which it has failed in its original brief is evidenced by the continued existence of news services on all the remaining radio channels.

In our case the syndrome manifests itself by creating in the minds of our supporters the idea that absence of news means absence of action or even worse. The truth isn’t like that at all, but is simply that some things take longer to happen than others. In the BBC Radio 5 equivalent, we’ve reached a lull in the conflict; in reality we are waiting for results from our legal advisers.

And in our case this process is made slower still by the proper need to finance our activities separately from the main ABAP financial resources. Whereas a large commercial firm could simply seek a legal opinion and deal with the costs later, we have to establish absolute costs before the event to ensure that we don’t spend what we don’t have.

That in turn is why the campaign to raise funds by individual contributions continues with such importance.

Evidence that we may be having some effect on British Airways management comes from the number of people who took your writer aside at the event reported below and to various degrees conveyed advice or straightforward threats that he should abandon this campaign. Various penalties were suggested. More significantly, none of those issuing the advice/threat was prepared to be named. Frankly, like spoiled ballot papers, such views or threats don’t count. Furthermore I reiterate my invitation to publish on my blog the views of anyone wishing to offer their point of view. Any such views will either be published in full or not published at all and this will only occur if they are deemed by my legal advisor to result in legal liability. Furthermore, the medium through which the blog is published (Blogspot) does not permit amendment of the comments submitted ie they cannot be censored.

The additional news I can publish is that Dayne Markham and your writer were invited to speak recently at a luncheon of former senior BOAC managers and board members - and informally meet with some equivalent former BEA colleagues lunching at the same time in the same place. We summarised the campaign to date and Dayne explained why ABAP’s Committee felt that while the Staff Travel issue clearly falls within the competence and limits of ABAP’s constitution, it was necessary to draw a distinction between ABAP’s ongoing negotiations with BA Pensions and the Working Group’s campaign to even start negotiating with BA over the Staff Travel issue. All our presentations, both formal and informal were warmly received, generally supported in the same way that support has been throughout ie in relation to the extent to which individuals are affected by the proposed changes.

The meetings did produce some specific contacts which the ABAP Working Group will be pursuing urgently and the results of those efforts will be reported here in due course.

Inevitably there is a minority view that all this isn’t worth the candle, that questioning and seeking to change the mind of a powerful and worldwide company is a futile waste of time; some ludicrously continue to suggest that this is driven by individual grudge. The last point is so stupid that comment is almost unnecessary; suffice to say that here and in the blog the writer has consistently said that the issue is not about personalities but about unfairness. They cite our recognition that we may not succeed as a reason not to try. That these same people once led BOAC and BEA through some extraordinarily difficult times both operationally and financially with tenacity and wisdom can only suggest that there may truly be no country for old men, or certainly for old brains. For our part it is enough to reiterate the caution to those opposing our (futile) objectives in British Airways that the adversary who has nothing to lose is a dangerous adversary indeed.

This posting is appearing here and on the Staff Travel blog at:
http://bastafftravel.blogspot.com

Staff Travel Campaign - Heads raised above the parapet

Many people have been anxious to know what is happening with the Staff Travel Fighting Fund and our campaign to right the injustices of Staff Travel 2009. To those who wrote and those who haven’t written but who nevertheless wondered why there’d been no news, thank you for your patience.

The campaign is in good health but so that there could be no suggestion later that we’d not exhausted every avenue before setting the campaign in motion we felt it right to wait with reasonable patience whilst Mr Walsh, British Airways and its willing acolytes in the Liaison Council played their game of either not replying to correspondence or postponing responses until a later date.

Of course British Airways would be happy to delay any action until next year when they can announce that the new arrangements are a fait accompli but ABAP has decided that enough is enough.

Accordingly the core Working Group has been formed from amongst the many volunteers who offered to help. It is only a core for the campaign we envisage will expand and involve at least all those who offered to help, maybe even more, so I trust no-one will feel aggrieved that their services have been overlooked.

In addition to the writer, Philip Howells, and Dayne Markham who has been heading the campaign on the ABAP committee, these are the new members of the Working Group:

Alan Murgatroyd, formerly a Captain with BOAC and BA, and then with Singapore Airlines, now retired and living in North Island, New Zealand.

Conor Walsh, now represents BA Canada pensioners on the BA Canada Pensions Fund committee.

The structure of the Working Group broadly reflects the composition of those affected by the Staff Travel 2009 proposals with a balance between those who are UK based and those living abroad. This should bring home to Mr Walsh and his colleagues that he is not merely dealing with a UK-based problem but one which has publicity ramifications worldwide.

We do not envisage any need for the Working Group to travel - all communication and meetings will be carried out via the Internet and Conference calls using Skype Internet Telephony which is free to download and use.

Whilst publishing names it should be remembered that our campaign is not about personalities, despite the concentration on the CEO - made inevitable unfortunately by his close personal involvement in the problem. As I write there are calls from BALPA (see Previous News) for the resignation of the whole senior management and some large insurers are refusing to insure passengers and their luggage using Terminal 5 all of which add to the pressure on Mr Walsh to accept his role in the last two year's fiascos and resign. That would not solve our problem. Unless Walsh was to be replaced by a CEO who promised to reverse the inequities of the Staff Travel situation our campaign will continue.

In an ideal world we would publish every detail of the campaign openly here but as you will appreciate, this is a publicly available site and we should not be serving our supporter’s interests if we revealed our strategy and tactics to British Airways, especially when one of the first considerations is to determine the strength and basis of any legal challenge.

However, we are mindful of our broad condemnation of the Liaison Council’s willingness to discuss Staff Travel with British Airways under a non-disclosure agreement and assure you that any lack of absolute candour in the publications of the Working Group will only be to protect your interests. Furthermore, when the matter is finally resolved, not only will there be a full financial accounting to demonstrate how the campaign funds have been used and thus how much remains to refund to contributors, but all the negotiations will be published in full also.

For now may I send the thanks of all involved in and outside ABAP to everyone who has contributed to the Fighting Fund. It will remain open until the campaign is resolved.

Call for new management in BA

British Airways’ pilots and flight crew have called on Willie Walsh and senior management to resign following the disaster of the opening of Terminal Five at Heathrow, a debacle which continues today despite the company’s declaration that from yesterday its Terminal 5 operations would be back to normal. In fact 144 flights were cancelled, partly due to the weather but also because the problems of baggage handling at the terminal have still not been resolved.

ABAP supports the call made in an open letter from BALPA, which is actually couched in moderate terms claiming that "there is something very wrong right at the heart of this company that is making our once great brand a laughing stock" and asking the City institutions and the Government to whom it is addressed "when are you going to listen with all your senses as to what is happening inside our business and when are you going to act on how it is ‘led’?"

Throughout the dispute regarding Staff Travel we have consistently questioned the rationale and logic (which appeared to be nothing but the CEO’s petulance designed solely to affect the happiness of a few thousand pensioners) especially when in the next breath the same CEO asks those same pensioners for their support for the airline’s wishes for a third runway at Heathrow.

Perhaps sensing the possibility of a call for him to resign, the CEO has stated that he will not step down because of the mess he and his team have made of Terminal Five. Like Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, (under who more than 1,000 foreign criminals were released but not deported), Willie Walsh evidently feels he is the best person to clear up the mess he has caused.

Even that thinking is flawed. It assumes that the CEO of British Airways knows how the debacle at T5 was caused, that he knows what went wrong and what brought the terminal to a halt only hours after he’d appeared live on television shaking the hands of passengers arriving on the first flights to land.

In fact, the evidence shows that he has no idea of what went wrong and is therefore not the person to even begin to put it right. British Airways needs new, competent management starting at the top and it needs it now.