The union representing British Airways’ striking cabin crew warned on Saturday that it would stage more stoppages unless there was a breakthrough in the dispute over pay and jobs.
Unite, which represents about 90 percent of British Airways’ 12,000 cabin crew, made the threat on the first day of a four-day strike, its second walkout this month.
“We are not announcing any [new] strike action at the moment, and we do not have to until after April 8,” a Unite spokesman said. “It very much remains a possibility.”
The dispute is embarrassing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who faces an uphill battle to win a general election expected on May 6.
The ruling Labour party receives much of its funding from the unions, and the opposition Conservatives have accused Brown of weakness in his approach to the disputes because of this.
Labour has called for British Airways and Unite to resume talks.
“It’s very damaging for British Airways, its very damaging to the national economy and it’s very damaging to the very jobs of union members which the union exists to protect,” Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis told Sky news. “That’s why it is so important that they get back around the negotiating table and seek to resolve this dispute by talking and not by confrontation.”
On Saturday, British Airways said Gatwick and London City airports were operating as normal, and enough cabin crew reported for work at Heathrow to operate its published schedule of 70 percent of long-haul flights.
“We have been able to minimize the impact but unfortunately, given that this is a very busy time of the year, we have not been able to provide alternative plans for all our customers,” BA chief executive Willie Walsh said in a video posted on the airline’s website.
British Airways says it wants to save £62.5 million (US$92.76 million) a year to help cope with falling demand, volatile fuel prices and greater competition.
The three-day stoppage last weekend cost the airline about £7 million a day, British Airways said. Unite disagreed, saying the seven days of strike action would cost the airline nearly £100 million.
Meanwhile, senior executives at Lufthansa are calling for a mediator in an ongoing pay dispute with pilots, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, raising hopes that a looming strike could be averted.
A company spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, saying only that the company continued to be interested in a “constructive solution” in the ongoing trade dispute.
“We will do anything next week to come closer to a solution,” she said.
It would not be the first time that the company has tried to solve trade disputes with the help of arbiters.
Lufthansa’s last major dispute with pilots in 2001, resulting in a pay deal that added 125 million euros (US$166.6 million) a year to staff costs, had to be mediated by Germany’s former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
Pilots at Lufthansa are planning to go on strike again April 13-16 after failing to resolve a dispute over pay and job security that already caused a costly work stoppage last month, the Vereinigung Cockpit union said last Monday.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has