WHEN JOINT REGULATION FRACTURES – THE CASE OF BRITISH AIRWAYS, 2009-11

ESRC Future of Regulation Seminar University of Strathclyde 17 September 2015

Phil Taylor, University of Strathclyde Sian Moore, University of Greenwich

• How did we get from here….

… to here?

The BA Dispute 2009-11 as Lens for Viewing Joint Regulation

• The conditions under which joint regulation can survive in the intense competition of a deregulated industry in neoliberal political economy.

• Is joint regulation characteristic of a particular phase of capitalism and structural change?

• How far joint regulation leaves a legacy – continuity?

• Models of collective organisation that survival might involve.

Research Methods 

• In-depth semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with 60 cabin crew, all BASSA members (British Airways Stewards and Stewardesses Association)

• Observation of BASSA meetings

• Analysis of membership data and scrutiny of key company and union documentation

Joint Regulation • Industrial relations based on joint regulation

of labour process and T&Cs

• Comprehensive and authoritative collective agreements - WorldWide Agreement 56 pages long and dubbed ‘the bible’

• Reps participated in discussions over ‘product’, staffing levels and decisions on ‘special circumstances’ for taking leave

• ‘Frontier of control’ policed by reps (Taylor and Moore, 2015)

Joint Regulation 

• Joint Regulation, but also a history of adversarial industrial relations and periodic attempts by BA to marginalise BASSA (Blyton and Turnbull, 1994; 1998; 2004)

• In 1989 BA changed contracts and encouraged the moderate breakaway, Cabin Crew’89

• 1997 BA decided to restructure payments BASSA won 80% majority for strike action; 300 struck and 2,000 reported sick in the celebrated ‘mass sickie’ (Whitelegg, 2003)

Joint Regulation

• Employer support - reps had paid time-off and facilities, BASSA’s relationship with management ensured lower level issues could be resolved swiftly and often informally

• Crew members testified to BASSA’s effectiveness in representing their interests

• Reps’ responsiveness and union accessibility (Taylor and Moore, 2015)

Joint Regulation

‘By talking to people I realised that hotels were checked by BASSA, things like that. I also realised how many rules there were and actually most were in my favour. Then you talk to people who work for other airlines and you think actually, this is not bad’. (Ursula)

 

Joint Regulation

‘We had offices at Waterside and T5 [Heathrow]. If you were down route and it was 4 a.m. and the company were saying “Right, we know you should be woken up at 9 to do the trip but we’re waking you up at 7”, immediately you’d phone up, you’d talk a rep and they’d say, “I’m looking at the worldwide agreement. No, they can’t do it…I’ll get in touch with somebody and get back to you”. And they would get back to you’. (Ellie)

‘Every day crew phone BASSA and say “They’re trying to do this”. You’ll go, “No, they can’t do that”, and you’ll stop stuff happening, so [members] see the power of the union as their voice every day. That is partly how BASSA get solidarity’. (Olivia)

Organisational loyalties

‘I have two mistresses to serve; loyalty to the customer service ethic and to the union, because it’s part of the CSD’s (Customer Service Director’s) contract to enforce the industrial agreement. ‘To support and enforce the agreements’, yes. It’s an interesting dichotomy, isn’t it?’ (Bryan)

Joint Regulation (or partnership?)

• In response to 9/11, 18,000 jobs were lost (2001-6) at BA ‘To save the airline’ (Bamber et al, 2009:36);

• BASSA agreed to temporarily remove one crew member per flight;

• Complement was not restored when conditions improved - crew saw BA was using 9/11 to drive rationalisation, confirmed in 2007 by proposals to reduce pay, pensions and sick-leave entitlement.

Economic Contexts: Civil Aviation and BA

• Erosion of high-commitment HRM & 2009-11 conflict rooted in long-term transformation of civil aviation

• De-regulation/privatisation sharpened competition• Legacy airlines responded through M&A, code

sharing, ‘hub and spoke’, strategic alliances etc. • Low cost competitors brought huge pressures for

‘legacy’ full-service providers to reduce costs• Labour central to restructuring – big proportion of

operating costs and variable element (Turnbull et al, 2004)

BA Strategies

• Oscillation between the twin strategies of prioritising commitment and driving cost-cutting

• Following the high point of Putting People First (PPF) to the market-led realism through the Business Efficiency Programme (BEP).

• 9/11 and effects reduced the ability to make strategic choices between high-commitment HRM and low-road high control, HRM paradigm (Bamber et al, 2009)

Joint Regulation 

Paradox of fostering employee commitment for customer service while reducing compensation for crew;

• BA’s long-term strategy was ‘responsible autonomy’;

• Crew enjoyed a degree of discretion when interacting creatively with customers;

• However, cost-cutting imperatives impacted on ability to exercise discretion – ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ HRM in conflict?

Eroded Organisational Loyalties

• Reconfigured customer service had the effect of undermining crew loyalties to BA

• Many crew saw their labour as part of the ‘product’, a process of commodification

• Hochschild – the transformation of private emotion for corporate use – but limitations

• Crew moved contingently between deep and surface acting – complexity of emotional labour

• Many crew were embarrassed by ‘the product’

Organisational Loyalties

‘It was just so false, it wasn’t heartfelt the way they had been…and I remember [at the last promotion] things were bad and you start questioning, can I do this, can I stand there and promote something I don’t believe in anymore? And I couldn't’. (Maureen)

‘In spite of everything, although I’m a staunch [trade] unionist, I love the company. Although the brand is shrinking, I love BA. I wouldn't have given my life to it otherwise, although I hate what it’s become. I am a BA-ite, as most union people are’. (Talet)

Operation Columbus - 2008

• Re-configuration of work arrangements and contractual terms under new and more aggressive management

• Heathrow-based crew would be transferred to a new ‘mixed fleet’ on ‘closer to market pay and allowance rates’ – a two tier workforce

• Intensified double burden for labour through the ‘driving force’ of cost-cutting while improving ‘leadership, performance management, consistency of delivery and brilliance in customer service’

Operation Columbus - 2008

• Most radical - ‘brand-new agreements and reward structures’ provided ‘a golden opportunity to break down barriers to change that [were] a feature of the old agreements and relationships’

• BASSA, as regulator of these ‘agreements’, would have to be broken if working conditions were to be transformed

• It was the fact of imposition of reduced crews that signalled BA’s intention to end joint regulation, the consequences well understood by crew

BASSA Response

• BASSA was the basis for individual representation and collective mobilisation

• BASSA was embedded in crews’ work lives

• Crew believed BASSA rather than the BA and in 2009 Willie Walsh CEO

• Membership density was 89% by 2009 up from 73% in 2001 and 43% in 1971

• Operation Columbus simultaneously threated the existence of the union and the nature of the job

BASSA Members on Operation Columbus

‘The WorldWide agreement is 56 pages and Walsh wanted to get it down to four...there’s not wasteful stuff in there, nothing ridiculous, it’s for every eventuality. If a flight diverts from Hong Kong into Amsterdam, what do we do? How many days off? If you forget your passport, what happens to you? What happens to your roster because you’ve got a fixed life, well shall we wipe the rosters so she doesn’t know what she’s doing for two months? Oh but she’s got childcare and all her arrangements are made. The agreements were there for the smooth running of the operation’. (Brian)

 

BASSA Members on Operation Columbus

‘when they removed the crew member, we said, well, they’ve just thrown out the format of negotiation. The old way of doing business has just been by-passed. You do understand what that means? Most of the crew got it, it was the imposition’. (Brendan)

Industrial Conflict 2009-11

• 22 days of strike action in the midst of a period of historically low levels in the UK

• Extent of collective action evidenced by:-

strike ballots (Nov. 2009) – 93% on 80% turnout, (Feb. 2010) – 81%x79% and similar later majorities

exuberant behaviour on strike days on picket lines and at Bedfont Football Club – strike HQ

• Mistaken to look at conflict only from the perspective of employees/unions and mobilisation

• Formidable employer counter-mobilisation as BA:-

withdrew the long-standing facilities agreement disciplined or dismissed union activists by passing

established disciplinary procedures; ‘strategy of decapitation’ (Ewing, 2011) recruitment of strike-breaking crew chartering aircraft from competitor airlines.

State Support

• Government opposition, P.M. Brown saying that ‘strikes would threaten the very existence of BA’

• Judicial decisions using anti-union laws on balloting which threatened the right to strike

Conclusions• Two-sidedness to outcome

• BASSA effectively defended the terms and conditions of ‘the legacy fleet’ – BA did not defeat them

• But BASSA could not stop the introduction of the new mixed fleet on inferior terms and conditions

• But unionisation of mixed fleet – the emergence of new joint regulation?

Conclusions• Dynamic relationship between those in more ‘precarious’

conditions and those covered by joint regulation

• There is no Chinese wall between the precarious and other workers

• Joint regulation should be multi-level it is not just about wage bargaining - unions need to be embedded in day-to-day working relations and be seen to defend the frontier of control;

• There is a legacy, jolnt regulation can be renewed for different groups of workers, but may be on inferior terms and conditions;

• Competition engendered by neoliberal economy means employer onslaught on terms and conditions, but removal of joint regulation not inevitable