Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1802441
matthew_w100 wrote:How much dosh will the new man get relative to the old? Will *he* be on less good terms, like the people who do actual work?


What's 'actual work'?

Ian
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By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1802486
matthew_w100 wrote:Well I don't do it, but I'm pretty sure the lady who knows how to throw me through the emergency door when the plane's on fire has done a fair bit!


I think she has too, but I'm not sure why that means that someone running the company isn't doing any real work.

I run a tiny tiny company that's at least 4,500 times smaller than BA (even smaller if you choose financial measures), and it's bloody hard work. In one way or another it consumes the vast majority of my waking hours, and a few of those in the middle of my sleeping hours too.

Ian
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By RisePilot
#1802492
matthew_w100 wrote: like the people who do actual work?


Why the glorification of unskilled blue-collar labour and denigration of professional skills? This gets old.
By A4 Pacific
#1802531
Why the glorification of unskilled blue-collar labour and denigration of professional skills? This gets old.

What professional skills did Alex Cruz bring to the table precisely?

Has he left BA a better or worse airline than when he arrived? How much money will he have taken from the business in that time?

Airline executives tend to spend a short period at the top. Their remuneration is geared purely to short termism. Those on the shop floor, certainly at BA, can often spend a lifetime in the company, and had previously taken a pride in what they provided. They took a long term view and understood the value of retaining customer loyalty and a strong brand.

Cruz has been a total disaster for BA, just as he was for Vuelling. He is utterly incompetent yet left with millions.

Was he ‘worth it?

Don’t make me laugh!

More of the same to come at BA.
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By matthew_w100
#1802536
Well if you want to turn what was meant as a light-hearted remark into a serious political discussion...

My mother used, in the seventies, to be astonished that one man could be worth ten times to a company what another was - the difference between the top and the bottom pay packet. I thought this was a bit tight and was prepared to go to a hundred. By the time of Willie Walsh, that had moved to something approaching a couple of thousand and I'm afraid I gag at that. And then, in times of austerity, the lower-downs are asked - nay, forced - to take a pay/conditions cut. All I was asking was if such a thing fell equally across the team or if they actually worsened the differentials. Because if you are going to argue that the person at the top deserves so much more because of the value they add, it is surely *they* who should bear the brunt when it all goes runny.

Anyway, are you suggesting that Cabin Crew *don't* have serious professional skills? Whilst (I know) running a company is hard, so is shepherding the contents of the 20:50 from Stansted out to 'Beefa. Similar combinations of persuasion, authority and blind luck too.
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By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1802550
mathew_w100 wrote:Anyway, are you suggesting that Cabin Crew *don't* have serious professional skills? Whilst (I know) running a company is hard, so is shepherding the contents of the 20:50 from Stansted out to 'Beefa. Similar combinations of persuasion, authority and blind luck too.


Not me, and no appetite for a full on political discussion either, I just baulked at the suggestion that there's real work and not real work, particularly as someone who's done an awful lot of not real work over the last six months.

Ian
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By RisePilot
#1802554
My mother was a single divorcee who worked three jobs to raise my brother and I. I had side jobs since I was old enough to push a lawn mower or use a shovel. I now live a quite different life and frequent this site due to being a private helicopter pilot/owner being one of my many hobbies. This change in one generation was due not to the amount of work - but the type of work.

Regarding your comment on cabin crew (you assume I know little of that world); my wife was cabin crew for a major international airline for over twenty years; the last 10 plus years just part-time, after our first son arrived. I personally always regarded her as unemployed and doing it for fun/hobby. No, airline cabin crew is not a profession; it is a job.

As for the airline sector in general (why are we discussing this on a GA web forum?), there is no great example company – there’s not a single airline that can be held up as some shining example of corporate acumen.
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By matthew_w100
#1802561
No assumptions about your knowledge here! And it is plainly more than mine.

I tend, roughly, to distinguish between a job and a profession by the rule "do I need to pass exams to do it?". In other words, is it regulated?
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By David Wood
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1802596
G-BLEW wrote:
mathew_w100 wrote:Anyway, are you suggesting that Cabin Crew *don't* have serious professional skills? Whilst (I know) running a company is hard, so is shepherding the contents of the 20:50 from Stansted out to 'Beefa. Similar combinations of persuasion, authority and blind luck too.


Not me, and no appetite for a full on political discussion either, I just baulked at the suggestion that there's real work and not real work, particularly as someone who's done an awful lot of not real work over the last six months.

Ian


When I started my first company I rented a broom cupboard from an engineering company to use as my first office (complete with the brooms, as it happens). One Friday as I was leaving 'the office' as usual at about 7.30 pm I bumped into the owner of the engineering business. He laughed and gave me a knowing wink. "Look at us," he said. "You can always spot the owner of a business cos he's the guy sweeping out the workshop at 7.30 on a Friday night!" I never forgot that.

And three or four years later, when my little business had about 450 full-time staff, I reckon I was still the last man home on any given Friday. And again on most Saturdays. And yet you still hear the flat-cap brigade (no disrespect to @matthew_w100 ) going on about undeserved reward. To be sure, the gap between rich and poor is too wide in our society. But let's not make sweeping assumptions about whether any man's reward is earned or not.
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By Maxthelion
#1802602
I absolutely believe in rewards being deserved by those who work the hardest and take the most risk. However, I don't believe it's possible for any one man to add a sveral hundred times more value to any business than a more runof the mill employee. There is a difference between excessive rewards paid to someone hired in and earned rewards paid someone who has built something from nothing.

Regarding the outgoing boss at BA. He was surely told to make the cuts he did by Willie Walsh. Having done Willie's bidding he's become toxic because of what he was made to do, and now is going to make it appear to the baying employees of BA that a bad egg has been moved on, and the new guy will represent a brave new dawn.