British Airways Turns to Slavery

[chunky]

Re: British Airways Turns to Slavery

I would say they are forced, they don't have a lot of option in the current climate most people have mortgages, kids and bills to pay. A lot of companies are taking advantage of the current climate to exploit their workforce. Its Economic Slavery to some of the people I work with. City analysts in London also felt that BA where trying it on when the asked about BA's situation on the BBC & Channel 4 news.

My employer Honda UK Manufacturing also prevented laid off workers retraining in government schemes earlier this year. Reducing the options of employees trying to secure work somewhere else.

[Miroslav]

Re: British Airways Turns to Slavery

1. I would prefer them to fail so capitalism could work. A solid company would then take the good assets and probably re hire the good crew to ensure a smooth transition. Why are we so affraid of letting things fail?

This IS capitalism working. No one is bailing out British Airways, as far as I know. They are in major financial trouble, and they are dealing with that by scaling back on expenses in order to preserve cash for near term liabilities, as any capitalist business would in this situation. One of the ways they've elected to do this is to basically cut peoples' pay rather than do layoffs. Many companies do variations of this - it's called a furlough.

What's not capitalist about that? Laying a bunch of people off is not really much more compassionate.

I would say they are forced, they don't have a lot of option in the current climate most people have mortgages, kids and bills to pay. A lot of companies are taking advantage of the current climate to exploit their workforce.

I understand what you mean, and I agree that basic regulations to safeguard rights in employee-employer relationships are always necessary. I'm not for sweat shops or other forms of extreme exploitation. But to some degree, what you talk of is also just the nature of the Capitalist system, right? It's always the case that people are "forced" to work to pay the bills - it's a basic social contract, unless you were fortunate enough to be born the Queen of England or win the lottery. And when times are bad, businesses do have to cut back and lay people off...and unfortunately the lower income / lower education workers tend to suffer disproportionately. I don't know of a way around it, unfortunately. We've tried Communism in different places around the world, and that hasn't seemed to work out any better.