Virgin Atlantic employees have threatened to go on strike because they don’t like the pay deal they’ve been offered.
Virgin have offered a 8.3% pay rise over 2 years with 4.3% in the first year. This is well above the pay rise offered to nurses and police and well above inflation.
Richard Branson has written to 4,800 cabin crew and told them that if getting paid more than Virgin Atlantic can afford is so critical to their lifestyle then they should work somewhere else.
This is pretty much the same approach taken by Jacqui Smith with English police officers who want the pay rise they were promised during arbitration, the pay rise that Scottish police officers have already got. The difference is, if Virgin Atlantic cabin crew don’t go to work, peoples’ lives aren’t put at risk.
Technorati Tags: Branson, Jacqui Smith, Police, Pay Rise
And Richard Branson does not have a monopoly employing cabin crew
Of course Branson can be stiff with wages, after all he doesn’t lavish money on buying his own island or anything likle that.
He has billions, and the people working for him, who hardly ever get to see their families, who have a disrupted life due to the nature of their job, somehting that they would have known when the signed up, so they can’t complain, but for branson to sit on his personal island and say that if they want a better life they can bugger off elsewhere, while he makes billions off the back of their labour is rich.
Likewise, Smith should be paying the police more. Wage increases for such people should be at the very least at the level of inflation. We should pay the police more, they literally put their lives on the line day in day out for our sakes. They deserve an above inflation pay increase.
“… We should pay the police more, they literally put their lives on the line day in day out for our sakes …”
Really? Most of the time they seem content to do nothing else but sit at the sides of roads and persecute motorists. That is, of course, when they can afford the time away from their desks and their oh-so-important paperwork.
They should get a pay rise when they actually start patrolling and combating real crime instead of concentrating all their effort on trivia.
Andi – we can’t tar all police officers with the same brush. There are some right bastards, but for all the shits there are at least two or three caring and considerate ones who do their best to serve the public.
Virgin’s cabin crew have never threatened strike action before – so it’s not as if Branson can say their being greedy (I’d like to see him try! Him and his fucking balloons).
Same with the police… when you risk being stabbed or shot at while at work, being denied a few hundred quid that your Scottish colleagues doing the same job were given would make you feel like quitting…
As for the Police Federation’s “olive branch” to the Home Secretary. I’m sure most rank and file police would rather Jan Whatsername was waving a big stick…
Anyhow. Hope everyone had a good new year’s. All the best for next year.
Calum, just because Branson owns Virgin Atlantic doesn’t mean he should pay their wages out of his own pocket. The company pays its own bills and rightly so. If it doesn’t make enough money to pay an increased wages bill then they’re right to say no. What would the cabin crew rather have? An 8% pay rise or mass redundancies in 12 months?