wnbubbleboy
Veteran
NY TIMES
LONDON, Aug. 19 - The labor battle that briefly crippled British Airways last week is shaping up as one of the nastiest scrapes of the summer as cost-cutting airlines and the companies that serve them face unrest from unions, whose waning influence is making them even fiercer fighters.
In Britain, the 900,000-member Transport and General Workers Union, which was once the largest union in the world but is now under pressure to merge with others as membership shrinks, is squaring off against Gate Gourmet, the money-losing in-flight caterer owned by the private equity group Texas Pacific.
Since official talks between the union and Gate Gourmet broke down on Tuesday - after sympathy strikes by members of the Transport and General Workers Union left thousands of British Airways passengers stranded at Heathrow Airport for days - friction has only increased.
Gate Gourmet employees accuse the company of practicing "United States-style negotiating tactics" that have no place in Britain. Perhaps more damaging, they are also accusing the company of health and safety violations and improper corporate activities, prompting Gate Gourmet to hire a forensic accountant to review its books.
On Thursday, the fight threatened to spread to Ireland, where Gate Gourmet workers voted to strike after being told the company would not honor promised pay increases. Gate Gourmet reinstated the pay increases, and the strike was called off Thursday evening.
British Airways, meanwhile, is investigating the Heathrow strike and has opened a confidential phone line, encouraging employees who participated to identify employees and union members who instigated the walkouts. Gate Gourmet is assisting in the investigation.
This may not be the last such bitter battle in Europe, experts say. Shrinking unions are expected to keep fighting with cost-cutting executives, particularly in the airline industry, where low-cost airlines have increased competition and high oil prices are eroding profits. The conflict is being intensified by private equity buyers, who are strictly focused on returning companies to profitability and less concerned about fostering good long-term relations within a country.
"It's likely that you're going to have a period of turbulent labor relations for some time to come," said John Logan, a professor in the industrial relations department of the London School of Economics.
Union membership in Britain, and in most of Europe, has been declining for some time, just as it has in the United States. Fewer than a third of British workers are union members, down from 42 percent of men and 32 percent of women in 1991. In European Union countries over all, just one in four employees belongs to a union, down from 43 percent just two years ago.
But as the events of last weekend show, union members are still wielding power. In fact, some say they may be more willing to resort to extreme measures as pressure on their members increases.
When Gate Gourmet brought on 30 seasonal nonunion workers on Wednesday of last week, after saying it needed to lay off 675 people, hundreds of the company's full-time workers left their stations and assembled in the company's cafeteria. "People just wanted an explanation from the management and the union," said Mrs. Atwal, Gate Gourmet's former shop steward, who goes only by her last name. "We had no intention to have a strike. We just wanted to know what was going on."
The situation became ugly immediately, both sides say. The employees, who are mainly women, contend they were not allowed to contact their union representatives and were locked into Gate Gourmet's kitchens without being allowed to use the bathroom. Later in the day, they were told they had been fired and that their cars would be towed if they did not leave.
Gate Gourmet's chief executive, David N. Siegel, the former US Airways chief executive who is no stranger to union actions, said the company pleaded with the employees to return to work and that the threat to tow their cars was made only because employees from the next shift could not find parking spaces. Employees were told they could be escorted to the bathrooms, but some chose to urinate in sinks instead, he said.
The company refused to remove the threat of dismissal, which unions wanted before they negotiated, he said. "We said we can't do that," Mr. Siegel said. "It was an illegal job action." By 2 p.m., Gate Gourmet had dismissed all the employees who had been working the shift, he said.
Gate Gourmet employees are unwilling to change with the times, Mr. Siegel said. For example, an increase in the number of short-haul flights, which generally travel on smaller aircraft, has changed the amount of time it takes a cart driver to stock each flight in recent years. But the number of flights the drivers are required to stock has not changed, resulting in inefficiencies, Gate Gourmet said.
"We have a lot of guys who work for three hours and then go to the local pub and play snooker," Mr. Siegel said. "We have drivers who make more money than members of Parliament." Most of Gate Gourmet's workers make £12,000 to £16,000 ($21,700 to $29,000) a year, Mrs. Atwal said.
British Airways ground crews working in Heathrow walked off the job last Thursday after hearing about the Gate Gourmet situation, bringing the airline to a halt for much of that day and Friday. The union did not condone the actions, but Gate Gourmet has been critical nonetheless, blaming the union for the failure of the talks and accusing it of 1970's-style labor practices.
Outside parties are less harsh. "It's hard to characterize them as a throwback to the 1970's," Mr. Logan said. "They're trying to perpetuate the notion of unions as dinosaurs, who don't recognize that times have changed. But that doesn't accurately describe T.& G. today."
This is the third consecutive summer that British Airways has been plagued by strikes, and some people have started to point the finger at the union's Heathrow representatives.
"There are some elements out there who are very militant," said Barry Sheerman, a Labor member of Parliament who has publicly criticized the British Airways employees for irresponsibly striking and ruining holidays for other working-class people. "Years ago we got rid of them in the Labor Party, but they are still active in the trade union movement. This is one of their last stomping grounds."
British Airways said it would not be appropriate to address allegations that union members were particularly militant at this time. A spokeswoman, Sophie Greenyer, said that the company had been successful in the past at cutting jobs and costs by working with unions. British Airways has trimmed 13,000 jobs and £850 million in costs over the last three years. "We've been able to work sensibly with the unions to achieve those savings," she said.
LONDON, Aug. 19 - The labor battle that briefly crippled British Airways last week is shaping up as one of the nastiest scrapes of the summer as cost-cutting airlines and the companies that serve them face unrest from unions, whose waning influence is making them even fiercer fighters.
In Britain, the 900,000-member Transport and General Workers Union, which was once the largest union in the world but is now under pressure to merge with others as membership shrinks, is squaring off against Gate Gourmet, the money-losing in-flight caterer owned by the private equity group Texas Pacific.
Since official talks between the union and Gate Gourmet broke down on Tuesday - after sympathy strikes by members of the Transport and General Workers Union left thousands of British Airways passengers stranded at Heathrow Airport for days - friction has only increased.
Gate Gourmet employees accuse the company of practicing "United States-style negotiating tactics" that have no place in Britain. Perhaps more damaging, they are also accusing the company of health and safety violations and improper corporate activities, prompting Gate Gourmet to hire a forensic accountant to review its books.
On Thursday, the fight threatened to spread to Ireland, where Gate Gourmet workers voted to strike after being told the company would not honor promised pay increases. Gate Gourmet reinstated the pay increases, and the strike was called off Thursday evening.
British Airways, meanwhile, is investigating the Heathrow strike and has opened a confidential phone line, encouraging employees who participated to identify employees and union members who instigated the walkouts. Gate Gourmet is assisting in the investigation.
This may not be the last such bitter battle in Europe, experts say. Shrinking unions are expected to keep fighting with cost-cutting executives, particularly in the airline industry, where low-cost airlines have increased competition and high oil prices are eroding profits. The conflict is being intensified by private equity buyers, who are strictly focused on returning companies to profitability and less concerned about fostering good long-term relations within a country.
"It's likely that you're going to have a period of turbulent labor relations for some time to come," said John Logan, a professor in the industrial relations department of the London School of Economics.
Union membership in Britain, and in most of Europe, has been declining for some time, just as it has in the United States. Fewer than a third of British workers are union members, down from 42 percent of men and 32 percent of women in 1991. In European Union countries over all, just one in four employees belongs to a union, down from 43 percent just two years ago.
But as the events of last weekend show, union members are still wielding power. In fact, some say they may be more willing to resort to extreme measures as pressure on their members increases.
When Gate Gourmet brought on 30 seasonal nonunion workers on Wednesday of last week, after saying it needed to lay off 675 people, hundreds of the company's full-time workers left their stations and assembled in the company's cafeteria. "People just wanted an explanation from the management and the union," said Mrs. Atwal, Gate Gourmet's former shop steward, who goes only by her last name. "We had no intention to have a strike. We just wanted to know what was going on."
The situation became ugly immediately, both sides say. The employees, who are mainly women, contend they were not allowed to contact their union representatives and were locked into Gate Gourmet's kitchens without being allowed to use the bathroom. Later in the day, they were told they had been fired and that their cars would be towed if they did not leave.
Gate Gourmet's chief executive, David N. Siegel, the former US Airways chief executive who is no stranger to union actions, said the company pleaded with the employees to return to work and that the threat to tow their cars was made only because employees from the next shift could not find parking spaces. Employees were told they could be escorted to the bathrooms, but some chose to urinate in sinks instead, he said.
The company refused to remove the threat of dismissal, which unions wanted before they negotiated, he said. "We said we can't do that," Mr. Siegel said. "It was an illegal job action." By 2 p.m., Gate Gourmet had dismissed all the employees who had been working the shift, he said.
Gate Gourmet employees are unwilling to change with the times, Mr. Siegel said. For example, an increase in the number of short-haul flights, which generally travel on smaller aircraft, has changed the amount of time it takes a cart driver to stock each flight in recent years. But the number of flights the drivers are required to stock has not changed, resulting in inefficiencies, Gate Gourmet said.
"We have a lot of guys who work for three hours and then go to the local pub and play snooker," Mr. Siegel said. "We have drivers who make more money than members of Parliament." Most of Gate Gourmet's workers make £12,000 to £16,000 ($21,700 to $29,000) a year, Mrs. Atwal said.
British Airways ground crews working in Heathrow walked off the job last Thursday after hearing about the Gate Gourmet situation, bringing the airline to a halt for much of that day and Friday. The union did not condone the actions, but Gate Gourmet has been critical nonetheless, blaming the union for the failure of the talks and accusing it of 1970's-style labor practices.
Outside parties are less harsh. "It's hard to characterize them as a throwback to the 1970's," Mr. Logan said. "They're trying to perpetuate the notion of unions as dinosaurs, who don't recognize that times have changed. But that doesn't accurately describe T.& G. today."
This is the third consecutive summer that British Airways has been plagued by strikes, and some people have started to point the finger at the union's Heathrow representatives.
"There are some elements out there who are very militant," said Barry Sheerman, a Labor member of Parliament who has publicly criticized the British Airways employees for irresponsibly striking and ruining holidays for other working-class people. "Years ago we got rid of them in the Labor Party, but they are still active in the trade union movement. This is one of their last stomping grounds."
British Airways said it would not be appropriate to address allegations that union members were particularly militant at this time. A spokeswoman, Sophie Greenyer, said that the company had been successful in the past at cutting jobs and costs by working with unions. British Airways has trimmed 13,000 jobs and £850 million in costs over the last three years. "We've been able to work sensibly with the unions to achieve those savings," she said.
