Union, Airline Reach Agreement In Eleventh-Hour Talks

ANN REALTIME UPDATE 01.29.07 1145 EST: British Airways and the Transport & General Workers (T&GW) union reached an agreement Monday on pay and sick leave a scant 10 hours before an announced two-day walkout of the airline's cabin crews was set to begin.

As ANN reported, the airline canceled 1,300 flights last week in anticipation of the strike, mostly from the airline's Heathrow and Gatwick hubs. Those cancellations affected more than 150,000 passengers for Europe's third-largest carrier.

"Unfortunately, the decision has come too late to prevent disruption to the travel plans of tens of thousands of our customers tomorrow and Wednesday," BA CEO Willie Walsh said in a statement today. "We will endeavor to reinstate as many flights as we can for those days. We will give more details later today."

Flight attendants voted overwhelming to strike on January 15 after the airline announced plans to reduce the number of senior flight attendants on its aircraft. The union took the opportunity to renew its objections to a new BA sick-leave policy that reduced the number of days crews were allowed and excluded taking sick leave for certain ailments such as stomach upsets and ear infections.

T&GW also sought to combine two separate pay scales created during the last strike in 1997. Workers hired after are paid on a different scale than those hired previously.

The airline hasn't announced details of the agreement as yet, with BA's Walsh saying only, "Negotiations with the T&G (union) have resulted in an agreement that removes the threat of strikes."

As ANN reported earlier today, the talks, called off last Thursday, restarted in earnest Sunday and continued unabated through today. According to Bloomberg, T&GW announced the airline agreed to combine the two pay scales and increase pay 4.6 percent this year -- an amount equal to the UK's estimated rate of inflation.

FMI: www.britishairways.com