Real reasons for 3 previous "summer disputes"

Just seen an interview on Sky news where the Chief Exec of Gate Gourmet was blaming BA virtually 100% for all the disruption.

Did he forget that he started all the problems??

He said that "it was a regular thing for BA every August to walk out".

First of all, the most recent problems with BA have been for 3 separate things.

2003 - Swipe in and out (union opposed) BA management tried to implement... Failed

2004 - EWS engineering system introduced and not tested. Also Staff shortages leading to delays and chaos. (Chaos caused by BA management not forseeing increase in travellers and did not authorise recruitment of new checkin staff until it was too late, leading to staff shortages, this coupled with delays caused major problems

2005 - Catering strike by gate gourmet. This was caused by managment of gate gourmet sacking a large amount of the workforce. It will be VERY difficult to replace the staff as the "average joe" will not be able start work wfor gate gourmet and get an airside pass straight away to go airside to stock up the aircraft as this can take weeks for security checks etc.



The trouble with all these situations are different managers within the comapnies tried to implement different things without consulting their staff and unions, leading to chaos caused by lack of consideration and confusion caused by management trying to introduce working practises that are unsuitable and unreasonable.

Thats because Gate Gourmet were (and are) losing �25million GBP a year and needed to do something drastic.


At the end of the day, its all about money and saving costs which is understandable but......what about the staff.


BA would not employ any staff during 2004 to replace staff that left (or were part of the 13,000 head count reduction that was required) and thats why there was a staff shortage during summer 2004.

It appears that all these problems have been caused by cost cutting crazy managers.



David Siegel, CEO of Gate Gourmet is American. (no offence to our US forum members!) He thinks he can come here and just fire people on the spot like he could in the US and he should realise that he cannot do that here and that unions are stronger here than in the US.

There are employments laws and procedures here that need to be adhered to.

The REAL reason why BA staff are out is because Gate gourmet tried to bring in agency / replacement staff that were not properly trained and the loaders did not want to work under an aircraft or by a truck being driven an operated by someone who did not have sufficient / any training.

This should taken into consideration and noted that the BA staff did walk out unoffically but it was for SAFETY REASONS and not neccesarily in support.

I hope that you all understand and see the real reason why this is happening.

This is why the BA loaders and aircraft movements are out.

Anyone worried about ticket changes refunds / rebooking should go here:

http://www.britishairways.com/travel...y/public/en_gb

If this was true (and it's not a credible explanation as you must know ) then their union would have supported the strike and not sought to persuade the baggage handlers to return to work.

I know its true and I can tell you because I work at heathrow and I was doing a flight when they walked off and we asked them why.

Would you work under a lorry while it was being operated in a bad manner?

So why on earth did they walk out suddenly? Surely if they were concerned with safety around aircraft they would have had meetings with BA Management and announced a strike in one week.

No, a meeting was called and at the meeting the union officials decided that it was not safe to return to work and they did not return to work.

For an official walkout to take place, a ballot would have to be called and the company has to be given a set notice period of industrial action such as 30 days noticee of a ballot to strike.

You cannot notify management of the intention. It would have to be "unofficial" for immediate action to be taken as BA management would just say soemthing like we would be "negiotiating" with the company etc etc.

As this was a safety issue, this is why the loaders walked off straight away.



The subject was about the real reasons of all the walkouts over the last three years... What does everyone think about these as well as the latest one?

From BBC News:

A spokesman for TGWU said: "The action being taken by British Airways staff is unofficial action and the union cannot support it.

"The union is doing all it can to get people back to work."

This is also not necessarily the case as not ALL loaders are in the T an G which is the union that Gate Gourmet staff are in. There are several unions in the airport environment such as Amicus and GMB as well. So it is not just one union involved.

This is a Health and Safety matter.

Yes I agree, as stated the action has to be classified as "unofficial" as the walkout was not notified to the company but it was a safety issue so they all walked off the job as it was too dangerous.... so therefore walkout was "unofficial".

Any Union does not support or condone any unofficial action as the company could sue the union for recommending it.

That is why the union is saying this.

What I don't understand is that there was no catering owing to the GG strike, and therefore, there was no actual loading taking place. So the ground crew walked out because of a potential, but in fact non-existent issue at the time.

If it was such an issue, then BA could have kept flying albeit without catering.

It seems to me that the ground crew were encouraged to walk out, presumably by the union, others who are not in the union followed like sheep, and all supposedly in illegal sympathy of the GG strike.

I'm sure we're not seeing all the picture, but the facts as I see them don't add up to a consistent story.

David Siegel is even saying it on CNN now.


Someone has to stop him......

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...52#post4448152

Hmm.
Seems to contradict.
How, on one hand, it takes ages to get staff clearance and them all of a sudden replacements are found at the drop of a hat?

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.

Er, how do you work UNDER one of these lorries? The footprint of the lorries includes the elevating container section and then the ramp that comes forward to meet the aircraft might be moved forward to project to the door.

H and S requirements are that you do not walk under the projecting ramp anyway, no matter who is operating it, trained or not, Gate Gourmet or another company, agency staff or employees.....

Will the catering truck roll over, er no.

Are the baggage doors underneath the pax doors, er no, or at least not for types I can think about, for the evacuation case at least!

I am not convinced by the risk based arguments presented here in this thread. I know that I can be wrong, but I would be grateful if somebody can clarify my misunderstanding of the situation.

1. Spottie is wrong because he has forgotten something, has the wrong mental model, has not made a logical connection relating to risk or has bum information to work from.
2. The arguments presented here were not logical, or at least those said to be from the union perspective.

If 2, then the BA manager who could not counter those arguments should get a rocket.

There was catering on several flights but eventuallt they ran out of prepared food and then there was none left.

The union would not have recommended it. Its illegal for the union to give advice like that.