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BA’s staff union declares strike as inevitable, issues date of commencing ballot

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The union of the staff members at BA, Unite has declared its intention of commencing the ballot for the industrial action against the airline’s not long past announced new work norms. Unite has concurred that it will soon start the process the moment it will learn about the enforcement of the disputed contract.

Unite represents a majority of 14,000 crew members of the airline. As of now the ballot is scheduled to commence on Nov 16 as the staff members have all plans set to hamper the airline services over the coming festive season

Unite said in a statement: “BA’s continued failure to consult properly on 2,000 notified redundancies and the company’s determination to impose fundamental changes to working practices, work organization and terms and conditions of employment leave it no other option but to ballot the cabin crew workforce.”

The ballot will continue till Monday, December 14. Members can cast their vote as to whether their should be or shouldn’t be an industrial strike till that date as it will close on the same day. The union is mooting a strike action based on the vote results from Dec 21.

Although the airline’s management is going all out to avoid the industrial action. In a statement CEO of BA Willie Walsh apparently urged the union to renegade the strike plan indicated and said that in order to regain the favorable times a number of structural changes are required. The new work norms announced are part of those structural changes.

British Airlines also declared on Friday that it had made a pre-tax loss of £292m between April and September of this year, and confirmed that the changes to working agreements would go ahead as planned.

“We will introduce further structural change in the second half to secure the long term future for our business,” said Mr Walsh.

“We are cutting winter capacity by 6 per cent and making further manpower reductions of 3000 by March 2010 and permanent changes to the way we run our business.”

The airline had initiated the talks with Unite and another union, GMB soon after it announced the job cuts of around 1,700 staff members. It’s been talking for several months now, trying to reconcile the disagreements and make BA a better place to work in.

The cuts to the number of cabin crew on each plane have allowed the airline to accept a large number of requests for voluntary redundancy, part-time contracts and staff transfers between different parts of the business, it said.

The staff members are also angry with the announcement of BA’s plans of imposing a two year wage freeze on staff and change working practices

These changes also include the pruning of airline staff on long haul flights from 15 to 14. The airline is all set to enforce the plan on Nov 16.

Unite said that BA’s reduction of crew numbers is “unfair and unworkable, leaving fewer people doing more work but for less money – and this will hit the service to passengers”.

The union also expressed its fears that lesser number of crew members will lead to worsening service to BA customers as crew are forced to prioritize essential tasks

Unite also filed an injunction at the High Court to try and stop BA introducing new working arrangements. The hearing took place on November 5, when it was decided by the court to proceed to a full trial on February 1.

Mobile operators going green

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Orange announces launch of recycling scheme to reuse the old electronic household goods, while T-mobile casts a new downloadable recycling application

In an attempt to introduce radical and impactful measures so as to hog the attention of the users, mobile operators have now taken fancy to recycling initiatives. Both Orange and T-Mobile, the behemoth mobile operators in UK have reportedly announced the launch of these appealing initiatives not long past.

Orange has hurled a scheme named ‘Recycle & Reward’ for customers. The scheme offers users the benefits of recycling their old handsets, laptops and personal music players. The recycling can be done in any of the Orange stores in exchange for money.

The best part of the scheme is that it is open for any member of the public and does not only confer the benefits over the Orange users. The scheme can be availed at any time in all Orange stores. If company is to be believed the initiative is a part of its commitment to becoming a greener business.

With the help of ‘Recycle and Reward scheme’ the customers could find out the exact monetary value of their old and used electronic goods at the Orange stores in UK. They then can leave the products at the store and can receive the money via cheque within around seven days.


The company tenders an array of cash rewards after analyzing the condition of a particular device. For instance, the consumer can draw up to £85 when recycling a Nokia N95, £75 for a Sony Ericsson C905 and £95 for a Samsung SCH 900. Orange will also recycle electronic devices and accessories with no monetary value.

Orange is also offering additional services with the scheme for the maximum satisfaction of the customers. For instance, the new ‘Copy and keep’ service is announced to facilitate the customers to transfer their essential contacts, music, and photos in all Orange retail stores. The company asserts that this service would allow the customers to recycle their old handsets more willingly through the Recycle and Reward scheme.


The service is available to all Orange care customers either for free at all Orange stores or at a minimal fee of £6.


Paul French, head of Orange Care products said: “At Orange, we’ve made some significant strides recently in reducing the environmental impact of our business. For instance, 80 per cent of our electricity now comes from renewable sources while in July we introduced the mini-SIM to reduce the amount of waste associated with new SIM cards. Recycle & Reward is just another small step, for us as a business and for the public, in our journey towards greener, more sustainable practices.”

On the other hand, T-Mobile has also casted a new mobile recycling application. The downloadable application is named ‘Recycle Guide’ and facilitates the users in discovering what they can recycle as well as finding out their nearest recycling points.

The company in order to launch the scheme colluded with Valpak Limited who helped it to develop the application, which helps over 3,000 large and small UK businesses to comply with recycling legislation.

Along with imparting information on where the customers can recycle their standard household items, the new application also tenders ideas on how to recycle more unusual items such as mobile phones and Christmas trees. The customers can also draw tips on how to recycle, can fetch utile links of a number of recycling websites while keeping a track of what they have recycled.

The Android version of the Recycle Guide allows users can pledge to recycle certain amounts of waste and can then share their promises with friends. T-Mobile customers can text RECYCLE to 80988 to receive a text message link to download the application if the phone is compatible.

T-Mobile corporate responsibility manager Fiona Cameron said: “Although national recycling rates are on the rise, thousands of potentially recyclable materials still get thrown away every day purely because people don’t know where the nearest recycling point is.


“We’ve harnessed the latest mobile technology in partnership with Valpak to make it easier for people to find out what they can recycle and where, saving them time and money – on top of doing their bit for the environment.”

Users on unlimited broadband packages oblivion of broadband download limits

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A research in UK reveals that around 8 million broadband users in UK are not aware of their broadband download limit.

A new research in UK has divulged that around 8.1 million broadband subscribers on unlimited broadband packages in the country are oblivion of their download limit. This puts the users at peril, as this may lead to exceeding the “limits” of their fair usage policy. The number was limited to 7.5 million last year, that now has reached over 8 millions.

It is also revealed that notwithstanding the immense criticism over the advertising of “unlimited” broadband packages with a fair usage policy, a striking 39 per cent of broadband customers in UK are still under the impression that their broadband package is completely unlimited.

The research has also claimed, that around 70 per cent of the major ISPs in UK are scheming to disconnect the users who constantly exceed their limit.

Out of all the major Broadband providers in UK, Sky broadband is the only provider that offers truly unlimited broadband packages to its users on its up to 20Mb Unlimited tariff plan. And only three major broadband providers clearly advertise the limits of their packages.

Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “It’s vital that consumers know the limits of their broadband. Even if you’re not on a set download allowance – so you won’t be charged for exceeding your allowance – you could still have your connection throttled at peak times or even be forced to move to a more expensive package.

“Sky does offer the UK’s only truly unlimited broadband package, but Be Broadband (www.BeThere.co.uk) and O2 Broadband (www.O2.co.uk) both have very generous fair usage policies, while TalkTalk Broadband (www.TalkTalk.co.uk) lets you boost your monthly download allowance from 40GB to a massive 80GB for £4 a month.

“Install our free Broadband Download Monitor to keep an eye on your limit if you’re concerned,” he advised.

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