BMI stewardess sacked for refusing to wear islamic dress while off-duty

[how1]

Lets try and get the islamics here to do as we do!! You would have a war on your hands!

[Rave]

Personally I've been 'boycotting' BMI since they provided John Major with a plane for his '97 election campaign. I put 'boycotting' in inverted commas because in truth I've never had occasion to fly with them anyway. And, TBH, seeing how the New Labour administration turned out, I'm begrudgingly coming round to the point of view that they had the right idea back then.

But yes, this is wrong, and I'm with you JPreston. I'm still not quite clear about whether it's optional for female BMI cabin crew to serve on flights to Saudi Arabia- if it's not, then this is absolutely 100% bang out of order, if it is then I think it's a bit of a grey area.

But then what's the alternative? All male stewards on flights to SA? In my admittedly relatively limited experience (I probably average 1 return flight a year) male stewards are at least 80% properly camp. Now camp /=gay (I'm often accused of being extremely camp, and I'm straight) but do the math. As I understand it, gay people don't go down too well in conservatively Muslim countries.

Personally my favoured answer would be to not do business with SA or any other countries where bigotry is endemic. I'll never willingly fly to Saudi Arabia, just as I'd never willingly fly to Singapore since they hanged that poor Aussie kid for a few grammes of heroin. Leave them to stew in their own hatred.

[badass]

I'll never willingly fly to Saudi Arabia, just as I'd never willingly fly to Singapore since they hanged that poor Aussie kid for a few grammes of heroin. Leave them to stew in their own hatred.

A few grammes?

It was 400 grammes. More than a few I'd say. At least there's one less drug traffiker in the world. I have no sympathy for him nor his pathetic claim it was to raise legal bills for his skag addict brother.

[Barakka]

Some more background i've found out;

The Politics bit:
BMI until fairly recently only did long-haul flights out of Manchester because when they applied for Heathrow it was full. In (I think) 2003 BA pulled out of Saudi due to safety fears over the bombings and subsequent threats directed at British airlines. From what I can gather the UK gov wasn't happy about not having any UK airlines flying to what is (financially at least) a strong supporter of the UK. To resolve this they offered the Saudi flight route dropped by BA to BMI, this route was based from Heathrow and would obviously give BMI a foot in the door in advance of the expansion of Heathrow with T5. BMI are now the second largest airline (after BA) in Heathrow and are dropping all the predominantly non-business (LAs Vegas, Chicago etc) long-haul flights from Manchester this year.

The stewardess from what I can see was sacked primarily for refusing to fly to Saudi with all other circumstances as secondary - hence why the investigation found little wrong. There is only two sets of route that stewards(esses) can choose at BMI; low paid short-haul, and higher paid long-haul. The Saudi route was simply added to the long-haul route and so the only opt-out was to move to shrot-haul - probably as (above) they were intending to drop a lot of the long-haul routes anyway.

Oh and Rave, by all accounts the same memo that informed the female stewardesses of their inferior status while in Saudi also pointed out to all staff that homosexuality is illegal in Saudi and punishable by death, and that they should bear that in mind ?!?

I don't think all the information about this has come out yet and i'm still dubious about the real answers to some of the questions. Part of me thinks this may all boil down to one memo sent out by an over-zealous HR employee having "a good idea" - David Brent style. I saw a PowerPoint presentation a few years ago from a company my wife was working at about employee dress giving 20-30 slide showing appropriate and inappropriate dress examples that was equally interesting/laughable/offensive. But to be clear these actions are awful discrimination by BMI and I doubt they would get my business now, partly because of this, but also partly because their routes no longer go from Manchester or to destinations I would want.

[JPreston]

Your politics bit is very interesting, thanks for posting it. I for one applaud BA for making the decision to protect its staff and brand by refusing to fly to Saudi Arabia altogether, despite it presumably being quite a valuable route. The governments' subsequent bung to BMI was possibly in recognition of their unquestioning support in carrying out controversial forced deportations to such places as the Sudan, Iran and Somalia, as is well documented. Perhaps if Lisa Ashton had not refused to fly then she would have found herself veiled and made to walk behind openly gay male colleagues as they forcibly deport asylum seekers to face execution in their home country for the 'crime' of homosexuality. What an advert for BMI that would be.

The stewardess from what I can see was sacked primarily for refusing to fly to Saudi with all other circumstances as secondary - hence why the investigation found little wrong. There is only two sets of route that stewards(esses) can choose at BMI; low paid short-haul, and higher paid long-haul. The Saudi route was simply added to the long-haul route and so the only opt-out was to move to shrot-haul - probably as (above) they were intending to drop a lot of the long-haul routes anyway.

I partly agree with your first sentence, although there are indications of contructive dismissal in this particular case that were excluded from the employment tribunal (I intended from the outset for this thread to be about BMI's staff policy, not the culture of Saudi Arabia or the specifics of Lisa Ashton's dismissal) which I'll post in a second.

I think it needs to be pointed out though that the 'choice' you describe is not how the industry operates. Flights are crewed on an individual basis at short notice and there would be no requirement for her to move exclusively to short-haul while other long-haul routes were still being serviced from her hub, even if those routes are to be ended some months in the future. The reasons that short-haul is not so well paid include the fact that it attracts fewer hours of flight allowance, no stopover allowances, less opportunity for concession sales and so on. However the staff are equally qualified and still trained to the same safety standards. In order to earn the same money in a month as long-haul a flight attendant will have to work quite a few more shifts, which is partly affected by personal preference (i.e. at least she gets to go home everyday) but offering short-haul exclusively is definitely detrimental. Even more valid is the fact that the Saudi route was not even flown out of her hub - so she would have had to fly as a passenger from Manchester to Heathrow, on to Saudi, back to Heathrow, then back to Manchester. Her UK flights should be provided but she would not be paid for them. Understandably, doing this is a killer (particularly the last leg).


Anyway I've found a statement apparently from her record label made in the light of this publicity that expands on her exact circumstances, but it's very long (and may be completely made up, I suppose), so here are just some extacts:

The advise to Lisa from the Union was minimal some might even say non existent. Several times she requested and was refused direct access to a solicitor by the Union to ask very important questions that needed answering promptly. The fight has been with them as much as BMI. They would not defend her case in court.
...
a) She was never given the course that BMI said was required before crew flew to Saudi.
b) She was Manchester based; the flights were out of the Heathrow base.
c) She told the company clearly that she would refuse a Saudi duty 18 months or so before she got the phone call for the “Saudi duty” in question. One point that is significant is that the company “taped” the conversation between the crewing officer and Lisa that morning. Her documented requests to similarly “tape” meetings between herself and management during meeting were refused. We leave you to decide why.
d) She was already flying a mix of Long and Short Haul therefore could have easily been given a short haul flight instead, out of her home base.
e) No other cabin crew member according to BMI was refusing to fly to Saudi i.e. they were perfectly happy to follow the written instruction by BMI to “walk behind the men…irrespective of rank” (we do not know, or do we care, if the same memo was sent to BMI’s female pilots). Is BMI’s rostering system so poor that it can’t handle a simple request of no Saudi flights due to BMI’s own imposed requirement that only one person has issue with? Or, is there another reason? For your information, all major airlines in the UK can and do make changes on a daily basis to crew trips based on preference, illness, even personality clashes.
f) BMI introduced the Saudi route AFTER Lisa had worked for bmi for 9 years and had worked on long haul for 18 months.

All good points, in particular the fact that BMI could very easily have crewed the Saudi flight that day with staff at the Heathrow hub - that's what Crewing do every day. That she had not been specifically trained as BMI claimed all attendants servicing Saudi Arabia have been and must be, that she had said months earlier that she would not fly that route (which might sound unreasonable, but is a completely typical request for the industry - it's true where they say that flights are commonly re-crewed for no better reason than personality clashes), and that the conversation was taped by BMI all arguably smell fishy....but she is well placed now to appeal her tribunal if she wishes, and whether she does or does not has no bearing on the real issue. The real issue is that BMI's written instructions to its female staff - which are not under any dispute - are to wear the abaya and walk behind men at all times while in public.

I don't think all the information about this has come out yet and i'm still dubious about the real answers to some of the questions. Part of me thinks this may all boil down to one memo sent out by an over-zealous HR employee having "a good idea" - David Brent style....But to be clear these actions are awful discrimination by BMI and I doubt they would get my business now, partly because of this...

It's very likely to boil down to an awful decision by someone grossly incompetent, but while David Brent is mostly harmless this policy continues to severely disadvantage female staff to this day. As long as BMI continue to refuse to comment on their own policy it will always be possible to complain that we only are hearing 'one side of the story'. And I think they should be pushed/shamed into making a statement on this, perhaps even a parliamentary question is needed. I'm sure they would be forced to end this disgusting policy (which sets them apart from all other airlines, incidentally) as a result.