Word: globalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Thumped by a global depression, firms just about everywhere have gone to town on staff costs in recent months, from salary cuts to mandatory unpaid leaves. But BA is going further. Volunteers can sacrifice between a week and one month's worth of salary, or else spread the pain by taking a reduced salary for three to six months. Union officials have scoffed at the proposal. "Willie Walsh can afford to work a month for free," says a spokesman for Unite, BA's biggest union. "Our members can't." (See pictures of London's Heathrow Airport...
...Walsh, though, can't afford to do nothing. Tumbling passenger numbers and a soaring fuel bill pushed BA to a pretax loss of $656 million in the 12 months leading to last April. The year before, BA made $1.5 billion. "The prolonged nature of the global downturn makes this the hardest trading environment we have ever faced," Walsh said as the results were announced in May, "with no immediate improvement visible...
...away some $10 million worth of seats in what it dubbed the "world's greatest offer." That move "had a party atmosphere and a confidence and scale that actually built the BA brand despite the fact that it was giving stuff away for free," recalls Rita Clifton, chairman of global brand consultancy Interbrand...
...Unlike the Gulf War-related slump of the early '90s, the causes of BA's troubles are less clear this time around, Clifton says. Is it internal factors, the global downturn, the problems when Heathrow's Terminal 5 opened last year? Because of that ambiguity, "staff and observers won't necessarily think, This is all to do with external forces, so we've all got to pull together here," Clifton says. Seems like you can ask for that second pillow, after...
Even as Congress belatedly tackles legislation that would cut U.S. carbon emissions and international negotiators bickered over a global climate deal in Bonn, Germany, a new report by several federal agencies underscores the truths that too often risk getting lost in politics: global warming is real, it's happening now, and if we don't act soon, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic. (Read "The Human Cost of Climate Change...