This is why gate gourmet were striking because the company had been bringing in temporary staff to cover for what the normal staff were doing as overtime. They were doing this to cut costs. In other words, pay one for one for new agency staff, instead of paying existing employees, time and half and time and two thirds etc etc. for their overtime shifts.

This says that they were short staffed in the first place and that they needed to employ more staff anyway but didnt because they couldnt as they couldnt afford to.

They also used to cater four planes in one shift and then the company wanted more productivity from the staff by getting them to do 6 or 7 flights a day which would be almost impossible!

So a change in working conditions was imposed without consultation.

This coupled with the existing staff's loss of overtime and change of working practises caused a strike.... was the fire strike because of simular changes.....


There was minimal catering on flights on 10 August and this is what gate gourmet are saying in interviews.

Eventually they could not cater all flights and ran out of prepared food and then on 11 Aug BA started getting food from Eurest, a different catering firm.