BA to rehire some of thousands of staff laid off during pandemic

British Airways plans to rehire some of the thousands of staff laid off last year as the airline industry begins a tentative recovery from the pandemic. Unite, the union, says the airline is looking to rehire about 3,000 new cabin crew after cutting roughly 10,000 jobs, a third of its workforce, last spring and summer when the Covid-19 crisis had grounded most of its aircraft. BA did not confirm how many staff would be taken back, but it has begun offering new cabin crew jobs from next summer, according to an internal email. As the industry restarts flying at scale, staff who took voluntary redundancy last year but had asked to be put into a “talent pool” to be called upon when the industry recovered are now being contacted. The email to BA staff said the easing of UK-US travel restrictions had been a “major milestone” for the industry. “Finally we are beginning to see some real momentum as more countries open up for travel and consumer confidence grows,” the email said. But Unite sharply criticised the airline, which it said was acting “in bad faith”, offering to rehire staff on substantially lower pay than in their previous roles. “BA is championing its intention to recruit thousands of new staff, insultingly even asking those crew it sacked needlessly last year to reapply on substantially reduced terms and conditions,” the union said. <br/>