Would you work for nothing?

British Airways has asked 30,000 of its staff if they would be prepared to work for nothing for up to a month to help the airline survive the global economic meltdown. How do you answer a question like that?

British Airways is feeling the pinch. Fewer Brits are jetting off to exotic locales, business class bookings are down 13%, and last year the airline made a loss of £401m.

Now it is asking for volunteers to work for nothing for between one and four weeks in order to prevent the company slipping even further into the financial mire. Its chief executive, Willie Walsh, has offered the scheme in the hope it might stop the need for compulsory redundancies, and is giving up a month's salary himself.

The scheme is, perhaps, appealing to BA employees' sense of the greater good...

Read more @ BBC News Magazine

loads of my friends are working for free - doing voluntary internships and stuff - and getting their money from bar work at the same time. The only way to get experience at the moment,

[quote=Ya'qub]loads of my friends are working for free - doing voluntary internships and stuff - and getting their money from bar work at the same time. The only way to get experience at the moment,[/quote]
Thats voluntary work your supposed to get nothing. Working for BA is an actual job and i would be annoyed if i was working at the airline. Cathey pacific are also doing the same thing.

But what if it meant that your future employment was potentially saved?

It's not like people will work for BA because they merely believe in the cause... saying that if they let me fly a jumbo jet, I may consider not being plaid for the first flight or two.

The question is how generic - the BA stuff is just an example of where people are being asked to work for free. Another one is Job centres. Since there are not that many paid jobs around, they are encouraging the job seekers to do voluntary work.

So the question is what would it take you to work for free? What if the job was saving cuddly wuddly babies from alligators?

Depends on how much I enjoyed the job and time length - working in an airport sounds exciting.