A packed meeting of British Airways pilots at Heathrow heard that the real reason BA wants to pick a fight with its 3,000 pilots is that it wants to eventually massively outsource flying duties to less highly trained and lower paid pilots.
'Then the company will use this poorer paid, pilot force as a trojan horse to beat down the pay and conditions of its current pilot employees,' said Jim McAuslan, General Secretary of the pilots' union BALPA (British Airline Pilots' Association).
The trojan horse is BA's planned OpenSkies subsidiary which is to fly passengers from mainland European capitals to the USA.
'We have seen the evidence and what BA proposes is an attack on current pilots and their families. That is why we are vigorously opposing this outsourcing. OpenSkies will be using BA planes and they should be crewed by BA pilots.
'What is happening around the world is that major airlines are setting up a subsidiary which starts with just a few aircraft but which is rapidly expanded using outsourced pilots. The mainline pilots are then told they must cut back their own pay and conditions to the levels of the subsidiary. We have seen it happening around the world and we are fighting to prevent it happening here in Britain. We are saying to BA that we are drawing a line in the sand.’
BALPA is currently balloting BA pilots for industrial action. The ballot closes on Wednesday February 20.
At the mass meeting of pilots Rob Baker from the Allied Pilots Association in the USA, said that American Airlines set up a subsidiary, American Eagle, with just 16 aircraft. Now it has more than 300. And as a result mainline pilots have been forced to accept heavy pay cuts.
BA says it plans to start OpenSkies with just six aircraft yet analysts say the venture cannot be profitable without many more planes.
'Don't do what we did,' Rob Baker warned. 'We now desperately wish we had opposed outsourcing at the outset.'
Captain Ian Woods, President of the Australian International Pilots' Association told the BA pilots that Qantas started its subsidiary Jet Star with a handful of planes yet it received almost all the investment and its services from Qantas. Using outsourced pilots, it is growing fast. Qantas pilots have not had to suffer pay cuts as yet but they are losing work with routes being switched from Qantas to Jet Star.
'You are absolutely right to bite the bullet now while the bullet is mouth size,' he said.
Jim McAuslan said that further proof of BA's real intentions comes in the fact that BA has turned down BALPA's offer to accept lower pay and conditions for OpenSkies pilots - with a view to improving them once the subsidiary is profitable. BA is resolved that the lower pay levels for OpenSkies pilots will stay low.
'What is equally bad is that BA has told us that the pilots recruited into OpenSkies will not be recruited to a BA standard and if they want to switch to a job in BA they would have to go through the BA selection procedure and may not be acceptable,' Jim McAuslan added.
'BA is determined to have not one pilot community but two. That immediately restricts promotion opportunities and BA could use this device to set one pilot group against another.
We want all pilots in BA and this subsidiary to be part of one BA pilot workforce. BA planes must be flown by BA pilots.
We are going to learn the lessons of other airlines and we are determined to stop the outsourcing of our jobs.'