British Airways cabin crew members will go ahead with their strikes beginning at midnight Friday after talks between the union and the airline broke down, a union official said Friday.
British Airways Chief Executive Willie Walsh and the joint general secretary of the Unite union, Tony Woodley, met late into the night Thursday and again Friday in an attempt to avert two consecutive weekend strikes.
"This company does not want to negotiate," Woodley said of British Airways. "This company wants ultimately to go to war with my members and the union."
Walsh said he "deeply regrets" the inconvenience the strikes will cause to passengers but said the company will still try to operate as many flights as possible.
"I am disappointed the union has not been able to see the sense of the proposal we tabled today," Walsh said.
Unite has decided to strike for three days beginning at midnight Friday, and for four more days beginning March 27. Unite represents 95 percent of BA's 15,000 cabin crew members, but not all of them plan to strike.
The airline has unveiled an ambitious contingency plan to allow as many passengers as possible to travel. Through leasing aircraft and using replacement workers, Walsh has said BA hopes around 65 percent of its customers will be able to fly as planned during the strikes.
In a full-page ad in several British newspapers Friday, Walsh said a "significant number" of cabin crews don't support the strike and will continue to work, supported by volunteers from across the airline.
The airline said it has also made agreements with more than 60 other carriers to rebook customers free of charge during the strike period if their British Airways flights are canceled.
The industrial action is over planned changes to the way cabin crews operate, which British Airways says will save the carrier more than 60 million pounds ($90 million) a year. Unite has said the plans call for working hours to be extended and crew staffing levels to be cut, changes that it has said will damage customer service and the BA brand.
BA management submitted a formal offer to the union last week, Unite said, but said the offer failed to address union concerns about crew numbers and service delivery. That prompted Unite officials to announce the strike dates. BA then removed its offer from the table.
British Airways submitted a new offer Friday but Woodley said it reduced the amount of pay that was in the offer last week.
"It's ridiculous to expect any union to go its membership with a worse offer than was withdrawn last week," Woodley said.
The airline, for its part, also has rejected all union proposals so far, saying they would have saved the airline significantly less money than the airline's own planned changes.
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