BIG SACKINGS DUE AT B.O.A.C. based on Flight report
Stage three of Sir Giles Guthrie's plan for BOAC, and one that could cause the most touble, is now being negotiated with the unions, According to some reports, up to 7,500 of BOAC's 21,686 staff are due to lose their jobs by 1968 ~ 3,500 of them, it is said, in the more immediate future, All BCAC's efficiency campaigns in the past have been accepted by the unions on the understanding that there would be no redimdancy, Now they are being asked to accept it, and evidently on a vast scale, If pressed through, it will almost certainly ground both BOAC and BEA,
There is no doubt that BOAC is overstaffed - though no more so, and probably less so, than is BEA, But air transport is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Can it really be true that by 1968, when BOAC is at least “& bigger, it will need 4 less staff? Common sense protests. We have looked at BOAC's staff productivity..and although improvements are need it seems Sir Giles may be going to extremes, as we believe he is with his Super VC10 cuts. Are BOAC's estimates of their 1968 staff requirements going to be as vaguely and as superficially substantiated as were their 1968 fleet requirements? We fear that Sir Giles may find himself understaffed - just as have predicted he will find himself short of Super VCl0s - in three or four year's time,