Union barons’ plot to destroy your summer
BA staff vote to strike – and even Commonwealth Games are now possible target
‘There’ll be no trains running at all’
UNION barons last night vowed to wreck the summer holiday plans of millions after British Airways staff voted to strike.
More than 1,200 BA check-in and groundhandling staff at Heathrow Airport voted for industrial action in a row over pay.
It is likely that the GMB and Unite unions representing them will set strike dates for July 22 or later, in the midst of the school summer holidays, to inflict maximum chaos.
They warned that they will only call off the action, which threatens to ground hundreds of flights, if BA meets their demands within the next week or so.
It came as the boss of the TSSA rail union, Manuel Cortes, said his union could team up with the militant RMT during the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham next month to ensure ‘there’ll be no trains running at all’.
In other developments: n Day two of the three days of planned RMT strikes saw just 90 per cent of services running on the ScotRail timetable; n Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines threatened to cut union barons out of pay talks and go straight to staff in a bid to reach a deal; n Sir Keir Starmer dithered over whether to discipline Labour MPs who back the rail strikes after union leaders warned that sacking them could ‘end’ the Labour Party; n A poll found opposition to the rail strikes is growing, with 41 per cent of people now against them, up from 29 per cent three weeks ago; n Soaring inflation pushed up the interest bill on Britain’s £2.4trillion of national debt to £7.6billion in just one month; n Public sector workers could get pay rises of up to 5 per cent this year in a bid to avert further strikes, it was claimed; n Union bosses in Scotland told health staff they should turn down a 5 per cent pay deal, describing it as ‘unacceptable’.
If the BA walkouts go ahead, families could be forced to either delay or cancel holidays.
They also face being stranded abroad if their flight home is cancelled.
By law, the unions only have to give two weeks’ notice of strike dates, meaning travellers could have their breaks ruined at relatively short notice.
Customers whose flights are grounded will be entitled to receive a refund or be re-booked onto an alternative flight on their day of departure, even if it is with a rival carrier.
However, with airlines cutting their schedules due to staff shortages and airport flight caps, it is unclear whether there would be enough seats available to accommodate all those affected.
It will inflict a huge financial blow on BA, which lost billions of pounds during the pandemic.
At present, around 550 BA flights take off and land at Heathrow every day, but this number could increase over the peak summer period. Around half of these are short haul and half are longer distance.
The airline was yesterday drawing up emergency plans in a bid to keep as many flights running as possible on strike days.
BA said the threatened action relates to fewer than 50 per cent of customer-facing staff at Heathrow, meaning a proportion of flights will still go ahead.
The dispute is over a 10 per cent pay cut which check-in and ground-handling staff took during the pandemic as airlines made cutbacks in a bid to stay afloat.
They are demanding that their full pay be reinstated amid cost of living pressures and passenger numbers surging again after the pandemic. They say senior managers have had their full pay restored and want theirs reinstated too.
BA offered a one-off 10 per cent bonus, but this was refused. Talks between officials on both sides were continuing yesterday.
Strike dates could be announced next week.
Nadine Houghton, GMB’s national officer, said: ‘BA have tried to offer our members crumbs from the table in the form of a 10 per cent one-off bonus payment, but this doesn’t cut the mustard.’
Unite’s national officer for aviation, Oliver Richardson, said that ‘strike action will inevitably cause severe disruption to BA’s services at Heathrow’.
Ninety-five per cent of Unite and GMB workers voted to strike in the ballots.
Yesterday TSSA boss Mr Cortes said the union could plot walkouts with the RMT to hit the Commonwealth Games, which begins on July 28. Asked if the ten-day event will be targeted, he said: ‘That’s clearly a possibility.’ Like the RMT, the union is in dispute with Network Rail and train companies over pay and job security.
RMT workers will walk out again for 24 hours tomorrow, having already gone on strike yesterday and Tuesday.
There are fears the union could call another round of strikes as early as July 9.
A BA spokesman said: ‘We’re extremely disappointed with the result and that the unions have chosen to take this course of action.
‘We are fully committed to work together to find a solution.’