BRITAIN: Gate Gourmet dispute ends in compromise

Alex Miller

The dispute at airline catering firm Gate Gourmet — which sparked illegal solidarity action by British Airways ground staff, causing massive disruption at Heathrow Airport in August — has ended in a compromise.

Under the terms of the deal agreed between the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) and Gate Gourmet, most of the 640 low-paid and predominately Asian workers summarily sacked by the firm will get their jobs back or be offered voluntary severance packages.

However, 144 of the victimised workers will be made compulsorily redundant under potentially unfavourable conditions linking redundancy payments to "disciplinary records". Affected will be all of the union activists identified by the company as the leaders of the August strike.

At the September conference of the British Labour Party, TGWU leader Tony Woodley won a resolution calling for the repeal of the Thatcher-era laws outlawing secondary industrial action like that taken by the BA ground staff.

The October 6 Scottish Socialist Voice, the weekly paper of the Scottish Socialist Party, commented: "It is now crystal clear that as long as unions like the TGWU continue to fund New Labour it will both confuse and disorganise workers who see that the same New Labour is giving bosses the stick to beat them. Only a recognition of the anti-union role of New Labour and the need to break with it can start creating the conditions for the defeat of the anti-union laws."

From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.

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From GLW issue 646