Second strike called by British Airways cabin crew

Mixed Fleet staff will strike for three days next week over ‘poverty pay’

British Airways cabin crew members at a recent 48 hour strike in a row over pay protest near Heathrow. (PA Wire/PA Images)

As poor weather caused British Airways to cancel 80 flights in a single day, the Unite union announced a second wave of strike action by some BA cabin crew at Heathrow.

Union members in BA‘s “Mixed Fleet” operation stopped work on Tuesday and Wednesday, causing 48 flights to be cancelled.

Now a three-day strike has been called, from Thursday 19 to Saturday 21 January. The airline will publish a revised schedule on Monday.

The pattern of cancellations is likely to be the same as before: about 3 per cent of BA’s daily schedule, with mainly short-haul flights affected. Crew at Gatwick and London City are not involved in the dispute, and most routes from Heathrow are not crewed by Mixed Fleet.

The staff involved in the dispute were all recruited following the end of the bitter cabin-crew dispute in 2010, and are employed on inferior terms to longer-serving staff.

Unite says basic pay starts at £12,192 annually, together with £3 an hour for time spent on duty. The union estimates that the average member of Mixed Fleet earns £16,000, including allowances, a year.

BA says the lowest-paid member of cabin crew last year earned more than £21,000.

The airline will publish a revised schedule

The union demanded that BA “drop its confrontational stance”.

Unite’s national officer, Oliver Richardson, said: “We would urge British Airways to avoid the inconvenience and disruption of industrial action by meaningfully addressing levels of poverty pay which are causing financial worry and distress.”

The union says that more than 800 Mixed Fleet cabin crew have joined BA since the dispute began. It says two out of three of the 4,500 Mixed Fleet employees are now Unite members.

Unite claimed the first stoppage was “strongly supported”. But BA said: “More than 70 per cent of Mixed Fleet cabin crew ignored the strike call and reported for work as normal.”

BA described the call for strike action as “bizarre” and “completely without justification”. In a statement, it said: “We have spent many days in negotiation and agreed a deal with Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, before Christmas – but the Mixed Fleet Unite branch refused to recommend it and said it had been rejected on the basis of an online poll that lacked control over who voted or how many times an individual could vote.”

By 5pm on Thursday, BA had cancelled 80 flights because of the wintry weather at Heathrow, Gatwick and London City, affecting an estimated 10,000 passengers. Most of the departures and arrivals were short-haul, but transatlantic services to New York and Washington were also axed.

Aer Lingus, KLM, Lufthansa, SAS and Swiss also made multiple cancellations.

Delays look set to build during the evening, with some Heathrow departures now scheduled for after midnight – a rare event.

Further disruption is expected on Friday, which is the busiest day of the week for aviation.