British Airways has been slammed by the Minister for Employment Rights, Justin Madders, after it was revealed that the Heathrow-based airline had broken the law by paying thousands of cabin crew less than the legally required national minimum wage.
Out of more than 500 companies that were named and shamed on Thursday by the Department of Business and Trade for ‘undercutting’ their workers, British Airways was the country’s seventh-worst offender for failing to pay workers the minimum wage.
Official figures reveal that British Airways failed to pay 2,165 members of cabin crew more than £231,270 in wages that they were legally owed. A spokesperson for the airline says the underpayments date back to a four-year period between 2014 and 2017.
£18,640 per year
In 2017, a full-time worker (38 hours per week) would have earned just £18,640 per year
The underpayments affected so-called ‘Mixed Fleet’ cabin crew – a new fleet of cabin crew that British Airways created to slash wage costs following a dispute with older ‘legacy’ cabin crew.
Wages and working conditions for Mixed Fleet cabin crew became such a major problem that in 2017, staffers went on strike for a total of 73 days over accusations that crew members were struggling to survive on ‘poverty pay.’
At the time, the Unite union claimed some crew members were earning as little as £16,000 a year–far less than the salary they had been promised by British Airways when they signed up to work for the airline.
“There is no excuse for employers to undercut their workers, and we will continue to name companies who break the law and don’t pay their employees what they are owed,” blasted Madders on Thursday.
“Ensuring workers have the support they need and making sure they receive a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work is a key commitment in our Plan for Change. This will put more money in working people’s pockets, helping to boost productivity and ending low pay,” Madders continued.
British Airways says it identified the issue several years ago and made backdated payments to the affected cabin crew at the time.
In a statement, the airline noted: “We’re among a large number of companies included in a list relating to the National Minimum Wage, published by the Department for Business and Trade.”
“Back in 2017, an audit revealed we had accidentally slightly underpaid some of our cabin crew who joined us between 2014 and 2017 during their first two months of employment. We apologized and issued backdated payments several years ago.”
Apart from BA’s wholly owned subsidiary, British Airways CityFlyer, the carrier was the only airline named and shamed by the government in its huge list of offending companies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, British Airways disbanded the controversial ‘Mixed Fleet’ and merged all cabin crew at Heathrow into a single fleet. Newer cabin crew are still paid less than their veteran colleagues but are on far better wages than previously.
On Wednesday, the parent company of British Airways announced that the airline’s chief executive, Sean Doyle, had sold 650,000 shares as part of a long-term incentive scheme, netting himself a £2.1 million ($2.8 million) bonus.
British Airways cabin crew recently won the right to their own bonus scheme for the first time ever but it promises a maximum payout of just 4% of their basic wages if the airline surpasses highly ambitious financial targets.
