Willie Walsh heckled at BA's general meeting

14th July 2010

Chief Executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh was heckled this week at BA's annual general meeting by cabin crew.

Members of the  trade union Unite interrupted Walsh's response to a shareholder question with cries of "give us numbers" and "empty aircraft" as the BA boss said the airline had flown a successful strike schedule during cabin crew walkouts in earlier this year.

A flight attendant also questioned Walsh for 10 minutes and accused him of bullying staff , and not disciplining auxiliary staff over adverse comments left on Facebook about customers.

Around two dozen flight attendants attempted to shout down Walsh as he quoted figures concerning the number of flights that had been in operation during the strike ,stating that the airline had flown 100% of flights.

Two seated rows of cabin crew members also refused to accept his claim  that the airline was in dispute with the Union and not the staff.

He was repeatedly intererrupted as he attempted to answer questions concerning the executive pay structure.

Unite is  presently balloting 11,000 cabin crew over a new proposal to end the dispute that  has cost BA more than £150m so far and has seen an estimated 5,000 strikers lose access to a discounted BA travel scheme.

They commented that the best action by BA to restore morale would be to re-instate the staff travel concessions in full to all cabin crew, whatever the outcome of the ballot.

Spanish carrier Iberia , who are due to merge with BA have expressed concerns  with the way  that senior BA management have dealt with the whole strike issue, and that if a similar stance was taken in the future within the merged company it would be vigorously opposed.