V-Flyer

Thanks to Hurricane Rita I'm stranded in the American Club lounge at MIA - even the check in staff said how awful it was.

The ground staff also quite happily told me that they were very unhappy with the cutbacks VA were making in that virtually all the VA staff had been laid off yesterday and remployed under a ground handling crew, they were also saying how embarassing it was for them to send pax to the "club lounge" as we had experienced the CH on departure.
The particularly chatty lady also said they were cutting back elsewhere that we couldnt see but would notice eventually - very cryptic.

[V]

Yup, we've been hearing about and seeing evidence of these cutbacks for a while.

One recent post you may wish to read through (detailing some of these, specifically), is this one

I'd read that topic before but what surprised me more about today is that the check in agent actively apologised !

Originally posted by timsdm
I'd read that topic before but what surprised me more about today is that the check in agent actively apologised !

Well, I guess one thing to bear in mind is that some of them were the old VS staff (who've been "re-employed"). In that case, none of them were/are particularly happy about the changes.

My "goodbye" to some of the staff last month in the SFO CH was pretty weird. They were all really upset about what's happening to the airline (and passengers), as well as themselves.

This is really sad. [V]

The changes have been taking place over the past few months. All the ground staff at each of the US airports have been "let go"; a select few have been rehired by Swissport. Service will never be the same.

I felt the same when BEA took away those nice Vickers Viscounts with the BEA headrest covers and leather seats with plenty of leg room (but then I was only four, so the legroom thing could have been my imagination)
Times change.
Guess what? at my company 12 out of 30 staff have been made redundant, at Land-Rover 300 engineers have been made redundant, 5,000 engineers allied to MG Rover are still looking for work, whilst I understand the Virgin staff's upset, its the situation across many, many buisnesses.
Wheather the Government admits it, we are in the throws of what is going to be a major recession and this is only the strt of it.

Alan, I hope (and I think) you're wrong there ... yes there are some worrying clouds about but major recession?

Whilst there has been a steady decline in manufacturing jobs (for decades, actually), employment rates continue to rise. It's not exactly helpful to those affected by redundancy, but overall levels of employment in the UK are 315,000 higher than a year ago (and 2.3 million higher than 1997). There are some small signs that the labour market is slackening, but many parts of the UK have effective full employment. I really don't think that this constitutes a recession!

BC

BC,
the difference is that the jobs available are in the £15-17,000 range, not the £30-35,000 that skilled people have generally recieved.
The only areas of growth have been in the service industries at minimum wage, not in skilled areas. manufacturing is moving to eastern europe, Computer programming to India, we will see soon a move of financial areas to outside the UK.
The economy is surviving on high house prices and people using the equity to fund lifestyle requirements and credit cards.
We have seen this year retail getting hammered as people have to tighten their belts, with shops closing and redundancies in that sector as well.
even mobile phone sales have flattened out.
There does not seem to be any growth areas apart from the Government, which has to be paid for eventually.

Hear, hear, Alan. Bursting of the proverbial bubble is just around the corner. A combination of a crass government and a general attitude with larger companies to profiteer shamelessly wherever they can (VS being just one example). Just look how the supermarkets are acting at the moment. Big boys like Tesco making billions in profit, yet screwing their relatively smaller suppliers to the ground on price and payment terms.

For job security and guaranteed pensions, the only safe place seems to be the civil/public services. End of rant...

(I have a friend who is a Civil Servant, who was involved with the implimentation of a computer system. That finished two years ago, since when he has been on "gardening Leave" whilst they try to find him another job .
They don't want to make him redundant as they would have to pay him three years salary!

Originally posted by AlanA
BC,
the difference is that the jobs available are in the £15-17,000 range, not the £30-35,000 that skilled people have generally recieved.

Do you have any statistics to back this up? Average salaries have been increasing at an annual rate of around 4% for a while now, but I can't find any broad stats on vacancy salaries.

Retail growth is slowing, but industry bodies (see, for example the British Retail Consortium Survey) are tending to attribute this to a combination of factors: mixed weather, rising labour, property and fuel costs and so forth.

Do you have the UK figures for mobile phone sales? Whilst the growth in the UK is not what it was, across Europe the number of phones sold grew by 10% on last year (22% worldwide).

BC

I'll let you argue between yourselves that slowing means less but here is a link for the phone figures.

And as for retail, I honestly believe the only reason that is staying steady is because people are spending money that isn't theirs.....










Edit by Mod to shorten link.........Nick

Those are world figures not UK. And in any case they still show growth, not "flattened out" which means no growth in my book.

Consumer credit is clearly a concern, although of course the vast majority of personal debt (85%) is accounted for by mortgages. There are plenty of causal factors relating to retail performance: it is not a simple picture.

BC

Originally posted by BlackCat
Whilst there has been a steady decline in manufacturing jobs (for decades, actually), employment rates continue to rise. It's not exactly helpful to those affected by redundancy, but overall levels of employment in the UK are 315,000 higher than a year ago (and 2.3 million higher than 1997). There are some small signs that the labour market is slackening, but many parts of the UK have effective full employment. I really don't think that this constitutes a recession!

BC

This is an intersting article from a paper that I do not read myself,

You should have read the piece in the Guardian today!

In fact, whilst retail confidence has fallen, a number of commentators are seeing some improvements as the article makes clear.

In any case, that's capitalism for you... [}:)]

BC

Originally posted by BlackCat
You should have read the piece in the Guardian today!

BC

Hey! don't you swear at me! [:o)]:D[:o)]:D

Originally posted by AlanA
Times change.
Guess what? at my company 12 out of 30 staff have been made redundant, at Land-Rover 300 engineers have been made redundant, 5,000 engineers allied to MG Rover are still looking for work, whilst I understand the Virgin staff's upset, its the situation across many, many buisnesses.
Wheather the Government admits it, we are in the throws of what is going to be a major recession and this is only the strt of it.

Actually, the bit about recession isn't necessary, IMO. Look up Joseph Trumpeter's 'creative destruction' theory - "a process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
The pain of redundancy is borne by the worker, but the fault often lies with management. Unfortunately, that's life, but one of the reasons that redundancy is less painful in the USA (I know, I know, I am generalising here) is that its economy encourages the transfer of resources no longer needed in one area to move to another. Thus, dole queues are minimized.

Or are US dole lines not reflective of the true economy? Most Katrina victims were not eligible for unemployment benefits because there were no official "layoffs."

Creative Destruction theory is based on a 100 year cycle of technical improvement--which is pretty questionable in an era of incredible technology which changes year to year.

I am all in favor of a fabulous UC experience--but not at the cost of VS staff who are working hard and receiving less. Outsourcing is often cheaper for the very simple reason that employees receive fewer benefits and less pay because they are not part of a branded institution. I am no expert of balancing cost and service but pride in work is crucial to service industry. If the payoff is only in free trips then it is no surprise that Y staff close off service with lights-out shortly after post-meal coffee...

hard times--hard choices.

cheers,

rr

Please correct me if I am wrong here..in the Uk as long as you are looking for work you can still collect the "dole" right?

Over here you get 6 months,then your done,so while the unemployment rate over here is low there are a large number of people that are not counted because it's past the 6 months..also if you are fired say for misconduct,say calling your boss a ****er (can I say that??) you can't collect.

ps

It never cease's to amaze me how these thread mutate.

Originally posted by jetwet1
Please correct me if I am wrong here..in the Uk as long as you are looking for work you can still collect the "dole" right?

Yes, but like in your neck of the woods, if you voluntarily make yourself unemployed, perhaps by pulling the bosses trousers down in the middle of the office and plopping a pot of pink paint on his head, then you risk not getting unemployment benefit (although I don't know how rigorously this is enforced). After 6 months you do not disappear from the statistics, but your unemployment benefit starts drying up. However in most cases it would be replaced to a large extent by income support benefit, housing support and so on.

ISTBC on all of this as I have not been "resting" now for some 26 years! But I think the above is at least directionally correct.

99

Well I wouldn't necessarily sack someone for doing that to me, would depend who it was, lol.

Skip the paint though and you might get a promotion:D

Sorry about that - i had just got off the phone to the boss, and looking at the prev post it was 0500hrs! So I guess I had a few mental images in my head!

99

Originally posted by easygoingeezer
Well I wouldn't necessarily sack someone for doing that to me, would depend who it was, lol.

Skip the paint though and you might get a promotion:D

and people say im a perv for thinking about Sarah in a shower

Originally posted by jetwet1
and people say im a perv for thinking about Sarah in a shower

Hey! How did you know the Rear Admiral was called Sarah, and what you doing thinking about her in the shower?

99