The news on British Airways asking its workforce to work a month for free has popped up in the news again. I can’t help but feel that’s pretty unethical for them even to ask this of the lower paid sectors of the business.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re earning £200,000 a year or whether you’re on minimum wage, when it comes to your income, the first £1000 a month is your most important. That’s the bit that feeds, clothes and houses you. The second £1000 you earn is for fun or for better versions of the essentials but it’s beyond what you need. Any money beyond that is just to feed your self-worth and stop you leaving for another company.
The chief exec, Willie Walsh (who it turns out is NOT a character from the Beano, despite the name) is asking his staff to forego a month’s salary and he himself will do the same. Except he earns a further fifty nine of those cute little thousands every month. That means that in his first month of the financial year he has already covered his basics the next 6 years. The money received during the next 11 months of the year are nothing but fun and extras. I’d say someone like him can easily afford to forego a month’s salary. He has covered his life essentials in less than a week’s pay. Someone who is earning less than £14,000 on the other hand has not. In fact, after tax they don’t even clear that first grand a month, so BA is asking far more of them than of him. So that’s unethical for a start and it stinks. (I don’t work for BA by the way, but this riles me anyway).
Add to that, when the company is hit by hard times, it asks the people who work for it to take a hit, but when BA is having a surge of profit, do the lower paid sectors of the business get to enjoy bonuses? Not really. Bonus schemes are typical among higher paid positions and atypical in the lower. When times are good, the top benefit from the boom while the bottom do not. Also, during boom times, the salaries at the top get bigger but this does not always trickle down to lower sectors of a company. It’s a one-way street where this money is concerned.
I just think that Willie Walsh dropping a month’s salary compared to someone doing the same on only £14,000 a year is laughable. It’s so Marie Antoinette of him!
It’s like someone fasting of all food and water for 24 hours for a cause compared to someone giving up cake for a day. The two are not the same.
Well said.
Comment by hoverfrog — 26 June, 2009 @ 7:04 am |
Sadly welcome to life. It has always been the same. Money goes to money. It does not make it wright but if BA don’t do somthing then there is a real chance that many of the people won’t have jobs to go to. My firm recently did a similar thing and all the partners signed up – which meant nothing to them but a lot to the secretaries etc….
It will be interesting to see what BA does for their staff when times are better…
Comment by BlackLOG — 3 July, 2009 @ 11:18 am |
Yeah it’s a paid job, not voluntary work! The people work to be paid to actually survive. Why don’t the higher up guys take a temporary pay cut for the next few months ?
Comment by crazykites — 4 July, 2009 @ 12:16 am |