At the beginning of August a dispute which had been bubbling away for some time blew up. Gate Gourmet, the exclusive supplier of on-flight catering for British Airways (BA), sacked 600 staff for taking unofficial strike action to defend their jobs.
The company has been threatening compulsory redundancies for months after staff voted earlier in the year to reject a package which would have cut pay and conditions. Things came to a head last month when, while still threatening lay-offs, they brought in casual staff to cope with basic demand. This provoked the walkout which Gate Gourmet managers then seized on to carry out the sackings.
Workers, 70% of whom are middle aged Asian women, were then frogmarched off the premises by security staff. Up to 30 'bouncers' removed their security passes, staff identity cards, and locker keys. Some people were forcibly removed after refusing to leave, including a pregnant woman who, it was reported, was carried out by the arms and legs. People outside the gate were told by a supercilious manager barking into a megaphone that they were all sacked and would receive their P45s by post. The workers were not cowed. They set up a picket on the hill opposite the plant.
Word got around the airport and especially BA staff, who have a close relationship with Gate Gourmet workers. Until 1997 they worked for the same company, and to all intents and purposes Gate Gourmet still functions as part of BA group. By the afternoon 1000 BA ground staff, check-in staff, and baggage handlers at Heathrow terminals one and four were on strike in sympathy in a marvellous display of solidarity. Without these critical workers all BA flights from Heathrow had to be grounded, and as time went on more and more of BA's world operations ground to a halt. In doing this they demonstrated not only the tremendous power of the workers when they are on the move, but also just how insignificant the anti-union laws are when they are subjected to a serious challenge.
As queues of angry holiday makers lengthened BA executives issued frantic statements apologising for the disruption but pointing out that the dispute was not of their making. For all of their assertions of how 'dashed unfair' the whole thing was they could do nothing to get the staff back to work. The workers remained solidly out in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Gate Gourmet.
The dispute at Gate Gourmet has been brewing for a long time. In 1997 BA sold their on-flight catering operation to Gate Gourmet, then owned by Swissair, since then it has been acquired by American venture capitalist firm, Texas Pacific Group. They did this to drive down the cost of catering for their flights. BA and its associate airlines remain the major customer for the service, and Gate Gourmet in Britain is still geared to producing for them. But this doesn't add up. How does simply spinning off catering into a separate concern cut costs? If the quality of the food remains broadly the same, and costs are to be cut, there is only one other way to cut costs and that is by making what they call 'efficiency savings'.
BA and Gate Gourmet both responsible
Gate Gourmet have been cutting back on wages and conditions using the threat that, unless they were delivered, BA would take their business elsewhere. In other words posing the question to workers: What would you rather have a pay cut or your P45? In this way they hoped to cut £14 million of their running costs this year by inflicting misery on hundreds of workers. For BA this is not a problem, this was their original intention! BA's assertion that the dispute has nothing to do with them is untrue, by getting rid of the in-house caterers BA washed their hands of the whole affair. They pressurise Gate Gourmet management to cut costs and they simply pass the pressure down to their staff, who are already low paid and work in bad conditions.
Now they have decided that the only way to cut costs, while maintaining profits, is to sack the existing staff who are already forced to work for peanuts, and hire workers from eastern Europe who can be forced to work for even less.
It has since emerged that this was all part of an orchestrated plan by Gate Gourmet management. Documents leaked to the Daily Mirror newspaper reveal that management planned a detailed strategy to force the workers into taking unofficial strike action so that they could go ahead and fire them. The documents are very clear that BA and British Airport Authority (BAA) should be informed of these in advance. Gate Gourmet deny that they carried this plan out. But one way or another it is exactly what happened. This is an attempt to smash the T&G in Gate Gourmet and to bring in even lower paid and more exploited workers.
Gate Gourmet managers are implementing these attacks but BA stand squarely behind them. This dispute is indirectly with BA who are applying the cuts from on high. That is why the workforce in BA, already sick of cuts in their own wages and conditions, instinctively rallied round the sacked Gate Gourmet workers. The workers at BA have been increasingly militant over the past years, staging unofficial strikes every year for the past three. This has been in response to the savage cuts implemented by BA as a result of increased competition in air travel since 9/11 and the expansion of budget airlines.
In the wake of 9/11 BA announced the sacking of 13,000 staff. They now have plans to go far deeper with the cuts. A large number of the new cuts will fall on staff at their international base at Heathrow, including 10% of check-in and baggage handling staff who will lose their jobs when all operations move to the new Terminal 5 building in 2008.
BA's managers seem to be blissfully unaware of the effects of their cuts on morale. The chairman of BA, Sir Rod Eddington, last month infuriated workers by saying that the strike was caused by the agitation of a few troublemakers and announcing that an official enquiry would take place into the sympathy strike and that the ring leaders would be disciplined. Suprisingly they don't seem to see the connection between four years of job cuts, increasing workload, more job cuts looming, and low staff morale which has resulted in unofficial strike after strike.
Last month Gate Gourmet was attempting to take a tough line with the strikers. They also promised to take back some of the sacked staff but not all of them. They are trying to drive a wedge between the sacked workers by branding some of them troublemakers who provoked the strike, and others as good people who got swept along in the heat of the moment. They have accused a small hardcore of workers of staging the strike through bullying and intimidation. That is some claim - What are they saying? That a small minority of 20-30 workers intimidated 600 Gate Gourmet workers into going on strike, and then for an encore intimidated a further 1000 BA workers into taking solidarity action! The real bullies are Gate Gourmet and BA who provoked this strike for their own reasons, without any regard for the people whose lives they are ruining, and now are doing everything they can to try to defeat it.
Behaving like children at the end of last month Gate Gourmet managers announced they are thinking of going home and taking their ball with them. They have said they are considering pulling out of their British operation altogether, this is unlikely because the business is potentially profitable. To add fuel to the fire BA have even come in and said they will not be extending Gate Gourmet's contract, only to contradict themselves the following day. Everyday the story changes and it seems to be designed to create maximum confusion. Gate Gourmet and BA are locked in a turbulent love affair, one day the engagement is on, the next day it is off.
In any case it is not the job of the unions to make concessions to keep exploitative employers in business. The bosses can say what they want, they can threaten to close down or they can promise the earth. They are not bound to keep their word, and they do not have to deliver anything. That is why it is dangerous for the union to engage in horse trading with the members jobs and conditions.
This is a winnable dispute provided it is linked with a campaign against the cuts in BA of which it is a part. The mood is strong among Gate Gourmet staff who have maintained a picket line at the gates for weeks now. BA workers are frustrated and annoyed with the attacks they have suffered over the last years and the ones which now loom over the horizon. That is why they are willing to fight to defend the sacked Gate Gourmet workers. It is right that the unions should negotiate but that doesn't mean making concessions. They are negotiating from a very strong position. The demand should be for immediate reinstatement, back pay to cover all loss of earnings, and a pay rise for all staff.
Gate Gournet workers must win
If Gate Gourmet managers want to act bullish then we should see what effect a few extra days of strike action has. The wildcat strikes crippled BA's worldwide operations for two days which caused chaos for weeks. While the workers lost two days pay; BA lost over £50 million. In this event if Gate Gourmet managers refuse to settle then BA will instruct them to.
The Gate Gourmet workers can win their jobs back and strike a blow against the attacks of the company and BA. The union must take a tough line with the employers. The union is in a very strong negotiating position which is the result of the magnificent movement of solidarity by BA workers.
However if the bosses think they can string us along and we will go away, we will need to employ tougher measures. The union should plan a series of strikes; ballot all remaining Gate Gourmet staff at other locations in the UK. They should put out an international appeal for solidarity action at Gate Gourmet internationally, and lastly to really put the thumb screws on they should ballot for action in BA. These could begin as one day strikes and build up until the objective is met. Every time the workers lose a day’s pay BA loses £50million.
A victory for the workers at Gate Gourmet would be a massive setback for the programme of cuts at British Airways which has been 'modernising' by trampling over workers and cutting services since privatisation. The profit motive of big business has ruined our transport infrastructure. Now BA are pushing through seemingly endless rounds of cuts in pursuit of profit. The Labour government should nationalise BA, Gate Gourmet and all major companies which were formerly part of the BA group.