Annoyingly, I booked a trip to New York to visit relatives over Christmas. Now, there seems a good chance that the trip will be scuppered. I hadn't logged into this site for some time, but did so after booking; I noticed the huge thread about the possible upcoming strike.
When I last logged in here, people were discussing the poor quality of the UC Scrooge Pack. I posted a comment about how it was not the specific petty issue of the pack's content that was significant, but what it told us about the short-sighted, penny-pinching idiocy of the current management. Well, now it seems that this banal management's chickens have come home to roost: through lack of care in alienating its best staff and in failing to moderate its worst (and in hiring them in the first place).
Over the last few years, the seething resentment amidst certain cabin crew has become obvious. Some of this is justified, but some is not. Some old hands are upset by the cutbacks, and believe they cannot offer the service they once could, and feel that the airline has estranged them from their calling. That is fair enough. But that estrangement goes all the way to management, who no longer seem to understand the sort of people whom they should hire, and are taking young, shallow children, basically, and throwing them into the economy cabin. A very vicious circle. On a recent flight, a number of the worst examples of crew were gossiping loudly in the galley about how they had just come back from clubbing, had had no sleep, were exhausted and could barely see straight. The tenure of the conversation suggested that this was par for the course on this particular route. So much for highly trained professionals whose primary duty is the safety of the passengers!
Of course, not all crew are like this. The best care enough about their jobs and their charges that they even post here, and are delightful, caring people. But even some of these wonderful people are in denial about the fact that some (maybe now many) of their colleagues are letting the side down in a massive way. I include the patent woeful management in these colleagues. They have a short-term perception of good loads and profits. Their soft-service cutbacks, they think, have been an unalloyed success. Their rose-tinted glasses have failed to notice how the canaries in the mine - their most loyal passengers who post to fora like this - have noticed that not all is right in the state of Virgin. Bubbling beneath the cheeky posters and fantastic new features like the Heathrow UC Wing is a family of staff now verging on dysfunctional.
As for the particulars of the wage claim: I personally would not work for the wages paid to cabin crew. But then, I wouldn't apply for the job! The attitude of the crew seems to be like the attitude of people who live near Heathrow and are constantly complaining about the noise of aircraft: you knew that when you moved in, and nobody is forcing you to stay there! People are not indentured into cabin slavery. They may leave their job or the industry, and seek riches elsewhere. Sorry to be Adam Smithian about it, but nobody *deserves* a particular salary. When people say things like "we deserve this" and "we deserve that", they're missing the point: you get the pay the market can get away with paying you. If you don't like it, you stick two fingers up to your employers and find better ones. If you cannot find better ones, then it seems that the market cannot support your dreams. Sorry. Life is tough like that. But even then, not all is lost: if the management continue to pay the sort of wages that only attract the above-mentioned callow "children", then the product will suffer the consequences, and either go under, or pay more to attract more experienced, discerning crew.
What about sticking two finger to your employer by striking? This probably will not work, because this is a highly customer-facing, brand-conscious, competitive service industry. Imagining that a strike will *solve* anything is like imagining a massive fistfight between siblings is solved by giving one a lollipop and sending the other to his room. Yes, the fight has ended, but that which led to it is in no sense solved. The resentment and the disunity is there more than ever.
Virgin Atlantic as a brand cannot extricate itself from a messy bout of industrial action easily. That throwback to the 70s is, in the public mind, the purview of brands like British Airways - old, established, dowdy, industrial - and not "fresh", eleganty, breezy brands like VS. If this strike action happens and spills into the front pages, then Virgin will have lost its virginity, so to speak. Nobody expects Virgin to have its own winter of discontent. Many people will have a sudden reevaluation of the brand if it does, for the worst.
Personally, the brand's magic is already pretty much gone for me, so much as I wish that it weren't. It is difficult to remain sympathetic to the smiley, breezy brand When I read the strike discussion fora. The utter contempt that some cabin crew have for passengers taints the whole experience. Those sort of people not only don't deserve a payrise, they don't deserve a job in a customer-facing service industry. Sure, it may well be that BA crew have a similar contempt, but at least they seem these days to be able to disguise it more efficiently, and to offer consistent service, as I discovered on a recent BA flight, which was excellent. I know I'm not the only one making such discoveries which, a few years ago, would have been unthinkable.T he management and crew of VS had better wake up to the possible disaster to their brand that this internecine bickering evinces.
When I last logged in here, people were discussing the poor quality of the UC Scrooge Pack. I posted a comment about how it was not the specific petty issue of the pack's content that was significant, but what it told us about the short-sighted, penny-pinching idiocy of the current management. Well, now it seems that this banal management's chickens have come home to roost: through lack of care in alienating its best staff and in failing to moderate its worst (and in hiring them in the first place).
Over the last few years, the seething resentment amidst certain cabin crew has become obvious. Some of this is justified, but some is not. Some old hands are upset by the cutbacks, and believe they cannot offer the service they once could, and feel that the airline has estranged them from their calling. That is fair enough. But that estrangement goes all the way to management, who no longer seem to understand the sort of people whom they should hire, and are taking young, shallow children, basically, and throwing them into the economy cabin. A very vicious circle. On a recent flight, a number of the worst examples of crew were gossiping loudly in the galley about how they had just come back from clubbing, had had no sleep, were exhausted and could barely see straight. The tenure of the conversation suggested that this was par for the course on this particular route. So much for highly trained professionals whose primary duty is the safety of the passengers!
Of course, not all crew are like this. The best care enough about their jobs and their charges that they even post here, and are delightful, caring people. But even some of these wonderful people are in denial about the fact that some (maybe now many) of their colleagues are letting the side down in a massive way. I include the patent woeful management in these colleagues. They have a short-term perception of good loads and profits. Their soft-service cutbacks, they think, have been an unalloyed success. Their rose-tinted glasses have failed to notice how the canaries in the mine - their most loyal passengers who post to fora like this - have noticed that not all is right in the state of Virgin. Bubbling beneath the cheeky posters and fantastic new features like the Heathrow UC Wing is a family of staff now verging on dysfunctional.
As for the particulars of the wage claim: I personally would not work for the wages paid to cabin crew. But then, I wouldn't apply for the job! The attitude of the crew seems to be like the attitude of people who live near Heathrow and are constantly complaining about the noise of aircraft: you knew that when you moved in, and nobody is forcing you to stay there! People are not indentured into cabin slavery. They may leave their job or the industry, and seek riches elsewhere. Sorry to be Adam Smithian about it, but nobody *deserves* a particular salary. When people say things like "we deserve this" and "we deserve that", they're missing the point: you get the pay the market can get away with paying you. If you don't like it, you stick two fingers up to your employers and find better ones. If you cannot find better ones, then it seems that the market cannot support your dreams. Sorry. Life is tough like that. But even then, not all is lost: if the management continue to pay the sort of wages that only attract the above-mentioned callow "children", then the product will suffer the consequences, and either go under, or pay more to attract more experienced, discerning crew.
What about sticking two finger to your employer by striking? This probably will not work, because this is a highly customer-facing, brand-conscious, competitive service industry. Imagining that a strike will *solve* anything is like imagining a massive fistfight between siblings is solved by giving one a lollipop and sending the other to his room. Yes, the fight has ended, but that which led to it is in no sense solved. The resentment and the disunity is there more than ever.
Virgin Atlantic as a brand cannot extricate itself from a messy bout of industrial action easily. That throwback to the 70s is, in the public mind, the purview of brands like British Airways - old, established, dowdy, industrial - and not "fresh", eleganty, breezy brands like VS. If this strike action happens and spills into the front pages, then Virgin will have lost its virginity, so to speak. Nobody expects Virgin to have its own winter of discontent. Many people will have a sudden reevaluation of the brand if it does, for the worst.
Personally, the brand's magic is already pretty much gone for me, so much as I wish that it weren't. It is difficult to remain sympathetic to the smiley, breezy brand When I read the strike discussion fora. The utter contempt that some cabin crew have for passengers taints the whole experience. Those sort of people not only don't deserve a payrise, they don't deserve a job in a customer-facing service industry. Sure, it may well be that BA crew have a similar contempt, but at least they seem these days to be able to disguise it more efficiently, and to offer consistent service, as I discovered on a recent BA flight, which was excellent. I know I'm not the only one making such discoveries which, a few years ago, would have been unthinkable.T he management and crew of VS had better wake up to the possible disaster to their brand that this internecine bickering evinces.
