BA strike chaos could happen here

David Bonderman - Ryanair chairperson owns company that sacked 600

By

Robbie Smyth

Hundreds of flights were cancelled, 70,000 passengers left stranded, 10,000 travellers with lost luggage and British Airways facing losses of £30 million after 1,000 of its workers staged a one-day unofficial strike last week. The workers, members of the TGWU, took the sudden industrial action after Gate Gourmet, the company who supplies meals on BA planes summarily sacked 600 TGWU workers.

The one-day stoppage was the culmination of years of discord at the British airline in a scenario that has significant ramifications for Aer Lingus. The themes of the dispute are all to be found in Aer Lingus's operations today. These include a management focused on huge cost cuts to the exclusion of all other considerations, outsourcing of key airline services, deteriorating work environments and secret memos outlining how to make the workplace intolerable for the full time staff.

The Ryanair connection

Then there is the Ryanair link, the airline's chairperson David Bonderman is the US financier who owns the Gate Gourmet company that sacked the catering workers last week.

Sacking catering workers will save Gate Gourmet up to £6.5 million annually and that's before you add in the pension savings of up to £7 million.

Mr Bonderman might need the money as his 65th birthday is only two years away. For his 60th Bonderman spent £5.5 million in 2002 on hiring a Las Vegas casino as a venue, Robin Williams to do a stand-up comedy routine and the Rolling Stones to play a private concert for his guests.

1997 sell off

The roots of last week's strike lie in the 1997 sell off by BA of its catering operations to Swissair. By 2000 Gate Gourmet is running losses and in 2003 is bought by Bonderman through his Texas Pacific company which specialises in turning around ailing companies through savage cutbacks and redundancies. For example Bonderman had made $635 million profit from his acquisition of Continental Airlines.

In 2004 Gate Gourmet begins negotiations with the British Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) over changing work practices at the company.

This year Gate Gourmet had a major setback when it lost the contract for Virgin Atlantic. Gate still operates in 29 countries employs 22,000 people, serving up 534,000 meals a day.

£6.35 an hour wage

Gate Gourmet workers earn between £12,000 and £17,000 annually. Gate management wanted to cut hourly wage rates from £8 to £6.35 and staff are expected to service 72 flights a day compared to 42.

The amount of sick days allowed, overtime payments and shift patterns were all being changed in a way that meant gourmet workers will be doing more work for less pay.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Gate Gourmet dispute was the leaking of secret management plans, more vicious than the recent Aer Lingus "push factors" memo.

Secret memo

The Gate Gourmet memo published by the English Mirror newspaper was titled "mile stones". It involved a secret plan to provoke unionised workers at the plant into unofficial strike action where they would be sacked and replaced with lower cost Easter European workers who were being trained in secret to do the unionised workers jobs. Gate Gourmet management had set up a new company called Versa logistics through which the new casualised yellow pack workers would be hired.

The miles stones strategy included threatening workers with no redundancy packages, no leaving work early, no extra pay for extra work, random drug testing, no smoking, eating or drinking in the catering van cabs".

When the workers went on strike, there were plans for "immediate dismissal" where management would collect ID cards, airside passes, locker keys and extra security to escort sacked staff from the airport.

Casual workers

Last week Gate Gourmet began to introduce new part-time staff onto work shifts, the fulltime workers called a union meeting in the staff canteen. Gate management instructed the workers to return to work, they refused and were summarily sacked and escorted by police off the premises.

This week talks are ongoing between the TGWU and Gate Gourmet. There is no doubt that the company is making losses and that there has been a serious contraction in their business.

The challenge for Aer Lingus

However, taking the route of antagonising and dismissing workers is the workplace of the 19th Century, where workers were often little more than paid slaves. This week Ryanair is threatening to dismiss some of its pilots, the next round of cutbacks at Aer Lingus is imminent. Do we want a Gate Gourmet in Ireland?

A new Aer Lingus chief executive takes charge this month. It is up to this person, their management team and most importantly Aer Lingus's owners the Dublin Government to set the highest standards for industrial relations at the company. So far the record has not been good. Last week gave a glimpse of what could be; the ball is clearly in management's court.