British Airways cabin crew have voted for industrial action, but have stopped short of going on strike in the first dispute between the airline and its flight attendants since the bitter battles of 2010.
Members of the 8,800-strong British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA), a section of the country’s largest trade union Unite, backed action short of a strike, with 91% of votes returned in favour.
The move comes as union officials have been pressing the airline to drop its new performance review system, which provides onboard staff with immediate feedback on their performance from passengers and colleagues.
The information is presented via a “dashboard” that includes staff league tables and red warning lights showing if the cabin crew member’s performance has been rated as poor. The airline says such systems are common in all industries and help to improve staff performance.
Unite claims its members are getting blamed for situations that are not their fault, including crew receiving poor feedback from passengers disgruntled about faults in the entertainment systems or air conditioning.
Matt Smith, a regional Unite officer, said: “Our members have voted overwhelmingly against the introduction of this flawed dashboard scheme. The BA management should note the enormous strength of feeling against this policy with what, we suspect, is a hidden agenda of future job losses. A perfectly adequate performance management policy already exists.
“It is completely unfair to expect them to be placed in a league table, competing against each other, over onboard issues that are clearly out of their control.
“Cabin crew time spent on these wasteful performance schemes is crew time not giving passengers value for money in a highly competitive premium market.”
The industrial action will take the form of cabin crew declining to engage with the new performance management system, including refusing to sign off feedback forms.
The action is a far cry from the bitter dispute of six years ago over staffing levels, when thousands of staff took part in 22 days of walkouts that cost BA £150m. BA’s decision to cut staffing levels on long-haul flights, which triggered the dispute, was not reversed.
In response to the Unite vote, BA said: “We can reassure our customers that they will experience no inconvenience as a consequence of this ballot result. Unite has been clear from the start that it would not take strike action.
“The system we have recently introduced includes feedback from customers about how they are looked after onboard. This sort of feedback is common in all industries and enables us to commend cabin crew who perform well and support those that need to improve.
“A similar system already exists for many crew. It allows us to offer our customers the very highest standards of service. We remain open to discussions with our cabin crew and their union representatives about this new system.”
