Here's a T&G press release about it.

T&G

The T&G give background to the dispute.

T&G

BBC news story about it

BBC

to be honest heathrow has crap service from all the organisations making it tick

there is no customer ethos

and the staff are the most arrogant people on the planet

sack everyone involved with the place if it were up to me

Are these all private companies to which you refer?

Are these the very kind of private companies that would sort out the NHS in your ivory tower?

Cheers, Andy

i'm lovin' it! i think BA needs a major overhaul.

Do you think the people who have worked hard all year,in order to afford a holiday,only to find themselves spending that time stuck in an airport terminal are LOVIN' IT.

nope i bet there are pissed off. i would be too but i don't think it's the workers fault for taking action. showing up to work to be told you've been fired by some twit with a megaphone is a little harsh and ba should be ashamed for not having a plan b to deal with the mess and more ashamed for not telling their customers what the deal was when they arrived at heathrow.

I thought it was a private catering company that did that -- not BA?

I find it hard to blame BA for what Gateway Services did.

When you get right down to it, though, Tthis is the new paradigm. Airlines are going to be smaller if we want to be able to afford to fly. I fly on BA 4-5 times a year, in part because I get really low fares in the off-season. I fly back and forth to Texas for £350 or less all the time. There's no way I can do that if they kept operating the expensive, bloated system they ran when I first moved to Britain 5 years ago.

I never fly budget airlines, because I think they're horrible, but I am virtually alone in that. Just about everybody I know (plenty of whom post on this forum) book with whoever has the lowest price ticket, regardless of which airline that is. Thus, driving down the market, and forcing everybody to cut back, thus forcing BA to lay people off, thus causing bad blood between the airline and its employees.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody who has ever flown a budget airline is responsible for this situation, not BA. We can't have it both ways. I want low fares, I know this means people are going to be paid less, and that there will be fewer jobs. If I take that £350 fare, rather than paying more, I am tacitly agreeing to this. Same with everybody else.

So which will it be?

easyjet doesn't have catering....

Nor I think will the 'mainstream' or non-budget carriers in the future. It is difficult to get up in the air, serve a pseudo-breakfast and get down again, int he time in takes to get from London to Dublin, Paris, Schipol, Brussels even Stuttgart so in time these services will be pared away as there is not a huge discomfort with travelling on a budget carrier for an hour.

I think that the TGWU may be acting unlawfully in this matter, as I had thought that Thatcher in one of her union bashing moments had outlawed sympathy strikes. More to the point I am confused that BA's baggage handlers are on strike but no one else's. Sure, it's quieter here at Heathrow today but there are plenty of other carriers managing to get planes into the sky. I suspect that there are wider issuers at play and that some bandwagon jumping has been done, perhaps to remind BA of the power that they have.

My SiL (BA Crew) is stuck in Manchester and has been told that she will be there for two days. I think her union has hired a bus to bring her and her colleagues home.

That's the point, Leontien. BA has to cut back on catering in order to lower its fares to the level of easyjet, ryanair and the gang. Budget airlines don't have to lay staff off -- they never had any staff to begin with. The jobs were never created, therefore they're not there to lose. Nobody ever got paid very much, so there's nothing to cut back.

BA is in a different position, because it dates back to when air travel was a luxury for rich people, instead of a right for all, as we view it now. As it tries to adapt, the unions resist, and it causes more financial turmoil for the only remaining non-budget airline in Britain.

I thought sympathy strikes were illegal too, but whose going to do anything about it?

This is all a heck of a coincidence coming a week or so after BA released its financial report showing that it had a really good year.


**ETA 'too'**

Easyjet is unionisted too, Amicus, T&G and, I guess, BALPA or whatever they're called.

mata-- BA could have and should have handled the situation differently yesterday. it seems to me they've taken a bad situation and turned it into a PR nightmare. keeping hordes of people in terminal 4 with NO information is just bad business.

Re"

Are these all private companies to which you refer?

Are these the very kind of private companies that would sort out the NHS in your ivory tower?

Cheers, Andy "

Andy you assume way tooooooooo much about my views

Private companys on their own never solve anything, active COMPETITION is what acts to improve things, Heathrow as is has a large effective monopoly position in many regards

Heathrow could be improved for instance by letting different firms operate each of the terminals, and allowing passengers to choose which one they went through, although ideas like this would need some redesign

Heathrow is crap for the same reasons as the health service, large numbers of its customers have no choice

on short haul catering is a nice to have rather than an essential, depending on your other connections and whether you have been able to eat on the transport to/from airport

on long haul its essential, lack of food on a 12/13 hour flight, where many of the passengers will be making connections of the same length (flights to auz/nz for instance) would have many people in hospital, diabetics would be dead at the end of such a journey

It's not an official strike, it's something some BA workers have decided to do in support of the catering employees (or ex-employees.) I do think this might not be the best action--their unofficial walk out over swipe cards was just silly, to be honest. Striking is a valid and valuable tool, but it can't be used recklessly.

That said, the actions of the catering company suck. I bring my own food these days. Give me £5 off the cost of the flight and no food, I'll be happy.

But I really, really, really hope they get this sorted out soon as our tickets for the end of September are with BA. (I was quite pleased with this, in fact, because usually the only tickets we can get for any reasonable price to Eugene are on United, which totally, totally sucks (not to mention having seats which are painful to sit in for 10 minutes, let alone ten hours.)

Wondered why Maria was sounding reasonable (for a change) and not backing the strike.Until i read the paragraph above and all became clear.

My memory of labour law is a bit hazy, I admit, but if it isn't a properly balloted strike, isn't it illegal? I mean, isn't that sort of the point? Blue flu -- for instance -- when all the cops call in sick because they're forbidden to strike, is illegal, and you get fired for it. I don't know if the law is the same here, but if it is, then in theory, they could fire them all.

How hard could it be to replace baggage handlers and truck drivers anyway?

That'd learn 'em.

Yeah, that would teach them. Fired! For showing solidarity! Fuck you, baggage handlers and truck drivers! We'll hire new ones, and in about six months, maybe they'll learn to not lose your shit. Plus, we don't care! Fuck you!

It looks like Northwest Airlines here in the States is next. Northwest has been running ads trolling for scabs for three months.

I think they could have showed solidarity with the catering firm by something other than crippling the only company in Britain likely to employ them, Barbara.

This is a process, and surely striking should be held as the big weapon you use when all other options fail. As far as I know, no other options were tried, in this case.

There is bad blood between BA and its workers, but if there is ONE non-budget airline in this country, and keeping it going would probably be a really good idea if one had a career in the airline industry.

This is a vicious strike, designed to accomplish nothing (they're not asking for anything, they're just not working), except to destroy.

And, yes, I have real problems with that.

After the bombings, the London tourism industry really didn't need this shit right now. There were/are ways around it. Nothing, at all, was tried first. Not petitions, not joining the picket line in their spare time -- nothing at all. Just a wildcat strike. To show us who is in charge.

That sympathy strike, although sympathetic towards the disgracefully treated gourmet people, is bully tactics.
It's not an official strike, hurts thousands of people and BA who basically have nothing to do with the gourmet collective firing.

It's not right and should be stopped.

Yeah! Fuckin' killjoys ... they should burn their union cards and fuck off back to Russia ... hanging's too good for them ... Henry Ford had the right idea ... gun them back to work ... Unions are too powerful ... we should have laws to stop them ... it's time to strike a blow for freedom ... support the silent majority ... adopt a scab for xmas ...

The lads and lasses are on their way back to their miserable jobs now ... all over ... all clear ... calm down ... Britain is saved ... we can all go on holiday again ...


Good luck to them ... bless them ... fuck the bosses ...

Oh! I forgot ... and for good luck!!

Maria will be pleased.

... and the poor sods who got sacked are still sacked ... they got families and debts and problems too ...

Alberr you old commie. Fuck 'em I tell you! Take your firing and eat your shit!

You too have eaten their in-flight meals ....

i have to point out that strikes are only 'unofficial' or 'illegal' because of maggie's anti trades union laws which new squeaky clean teflon party has failed to repeal.


edited because i used the wrong word

Ah but dont forget Tony has lots more power behind him than even Maggie did to stop flying picket and sympathy strikes. Imagine what Mas could have done with some ASBO's.
But what gets me is how the company accidently sacked some people who were on leave, getting married, on holiday, or in one case off having a baby. uman Resource Departments how would we ever manage without them.

the mind boggles


oh shit. teflon has the power

After listening to the arsehole fucker bastard that runs Gate Gourmet in the UK on the radio this am and then reading more on the BBC news web pages and the astonishing shite that the "Have your say" contributors have trotted out I came on here to have a rant and found to my deep annoyance that Alberr and Barb have done it all for me!

Every worker in the world should be paid FUCK ALL! and be fucking downright GRATEFUL that they've got a fucking job at all! The selfish FUCKERS!!!!!!

Only rich people that drive big cars and have loads of wonga should be paid properly and be treated with any kind of decency.

Bring back slavery I say!

Work the bastards till they drop dead and then get some more in.

What are you doing here, Martyn? GET BACK TO WORK!

Surely not? If the union didn't call a strike but workers put down work anyway, is that an official strike?

a strike is when workers withdraw their labour.

what has official got to do with it ?

the workers are the union.


an official strike under maggie's rules requires a ballot of the workers so unions (ie union officials) cannot in fact 'call' a strike.. officially.

Well, that's not the way it works here either, and our labour laws haven't changed in a long time.

I don't dispute their right to strike, but to put 70000 people through all that crap on a spur, seems wrong to me. They could've striked a day later and announce it before, would have saved a lot of people a lot of misery, and still be supportive to the gourmet people.

sadly, life aint that easy.

incidentally Gate Gourmet (the heathrow bit, i presume) was part of BA until that section was sold and 1,200 staff were transferred, so the solidarity is not surprising.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4144712.stm


as for starting a day later .. i don't know off the top of my head the timetable for an 'official strike' but it is a lot longer than a couple of days.

to have a quick strike the workers have to walk out and the union has to tell them to go back.

otherwise you have to go through this rigmarole

http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/union/employers-pl870.htm

if they dont like it they should do what ive done numerous times and tell the boss to stick it and walk out and get another job

ffs

I do not believe that anyone who has any notion of solidarity would not back the strike to the end. It's rule number one of trade unionism - an injury to one is an injury to all. One out all out. This is a contracted out former part of BA. The workers were sacked by a man with a megaphone. People who were off genuinely sick have been sacked for the hell of it. Their brothers and sisters have gone on strike to help them. It's their best chance.

Solidarity. It's the only weapon that working people have folks - don't forget which side you're on.

Beryl- it usually works out to about three weeks to a month. Eight days after notifying the company you have to hold the ballot for two weeks. It's not effective in this situation.

yeah, its that easy to get a job isn't it. get real.

I think what he means is that low paid, shithouse, get treated like a piece of shit jobs are two-a-penny...and unfortunately I agree. Thatch knew exactly what she was doing when she constrained the Unions the way she did. It had nothing to do with people being inconvenienced by strikes and her wanting to change that....it's all about setting the system, loading the deck to the detriment of the working class. If she had been honest to the voters of the day, would they honestly have voted for their 'neighbours' to be subjected to these type of conditions? Workers, sacked with a megaphone?!!!!!.....Fer Christs sakes!!
Easy for me to say, as I wasn't inconvenienced by the strike but if you were then don't blame the gourmet staff (airline food = gourmet...that's an oxymoron) or the baggage handlers for backing their fellow workers....it could be you that gets sacked by megaphone....and you'd be thrilled to bits that someone else was prepared to put their jobs on the line for you and your cause...Good on them!

Ok so lets imagine you are an asian lady living in Hounslow. Your whole fammily (those of you lucky enough to get a job in an area of high unemploment) work in or around Heathrow (the areas main employer) and you want to tell the boss to stick it. Well the job options are countless. NOT. Get a reality check......

PS Gourmet staff and sacked Gourmet Staff stand your ground. Especialy in light of the contingency plan that the managment at Gourmet had set up earlier this year. They secretly set up a subsiduary company to take over if the staff at Gourmet striked.
At least they had the bottle to strike, and have a strong Union backing.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ...

Sacked former employees of airline catering company Gate Gourmet ...

If striking in solidarity with your fellow workers is bullying tactics, then what the fuck is firing someone?

I just don't get the lemming mentality that finds sympathy with the side of the bosses that fire low paid workers.
Bend over and let them give you a large portion up the shitter if that's what floats your boat, but I'm not gonna do it, and I have every sympathy with those workers who felt likewise, and were sacked.

Fuck management, and fuck the scabs (virtual and otherwise) who support them.

Baggage handlers are pretty difficult to replace actually, some of the jobs are more technical than you'd imagine - a lot of those exploding DC-10's in the 70's were down to the baggage handlers not locking the cargo doors properly... ultimately no ones ireplaceable I suppose but the consequences of a baggage handler's fuck-up are a lot worse that for many other jobs I could mention.

Pretty sure unofficial strike action is a lot more widespread than we hear about - the posties at copperas hill walked out a few times every year (cos my former employer sent out emails appealing for people to strike break by taking the company's mail to boxes in neighbouring sorting office areas)

never saw that on the news tho'

Isn't that sort of the same as withdrawing your labour?

Wouldn't it be great fun for everyone concerned if all the baggage handlers did what tinman does, all at the same time? Now you come to mention it tinman, I think thats a great idea, it would cripple Heathrow for weeks, if not months, while they recruit replacement staff and get everyone trained up. That'll teach em.



We've already covered this subject, but I'll re-make my point about it. We have millions of examples of active competition on the high streets of every town in the country. Do we get better service because of it? The answer is simply, NO. Whether I go to Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons etc, it makes no difference to the service I get at all, nor do I particularly get it cheaper at any one place. If you split the terminals at Heathrow up, you'll just have four different companies, who's primary goal is to make profit, instead of one. If your primary goal is to make profit the first thing that suffers is quality of product/service, closely followed by employment rights/pay etc.

Good service is a product of philanthropy. Profit making is the very antithesis philanthropy.



They all have choice. You can go to Stanstead, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds/Bradford, East Midlands, et al if you like. I flew to South Africa from Humberside airport, OK I had to change planes at Schipol, but it was ace. When we got back I was out of the airport and in my living room within 30 mins of the plane touching down. How cool is that?

Cheers, Andy.

OI! I have no sympathy for the bosses in this argument, I just felt really sorry for the 70000 people stuck on heathrow.
AND yes, also for the sacked workers.
It's amazing that the company has the RIGHT to collectively sack their workers. Is that a thatcherite piece of legislation? Here that can only happen is the company goes bust.

This can also happen in France: Sacking a huge number of people over restructuring plans has been quite common over the last few years... Renault-Vilorde has probably been the first factory to be closed in a very short notice, sacking its workers, in 1997 I think. Looked very similar to what happened with Gate Gourmet.

I feel sorry for the people stuck on heathrow, but the whole purpose of the strike is to disturb the system. If it doesn't bother anybody, nobody gives a shit. But this strike in heathrow made the headlines... in France as well (maybe because for once it was not happening here.. )... You need at least this to put some pressure on the company, or on the government, to intervene and find a solution for the workers.

Going on strike is one of the basic rights of the workers. In France too, the government is trying to destroy this right.

One thing to remember is that airlines often deliberately introduce unpopular changes (like asking the low paid workers at Gate Gourmet to actually take a pay cut--while management were getting pay increases and they were busy hiring on temps) in the knowledge that a strike in the busiest month of the year is likely to get the workers who strike little to no sympathy and make them seem like the bad guys.

I'd really, really, really hate to have my flight disrupted--especially now as I'm desperate to get home--but I don't condone the crap that company has pulled.