Workers' Liberty

According to the Financial Times (27 September). "Gate Gourmet, the troubled airline catering company, and the Transport and General Workers Union, announced last night that they had agreed a deal to resolve their long-running industrial dispute". It doesn't look good.

The FT reports: "The prelude to the deal was an agreement on a voluntary and compulsory redundancy scheme...

"It is understood that 382 of the dismissed workers have volunteered to take a compensation payment. A further 137 dismissed workers meet the performance criteria agreed by the company and the union for compulsory redundancy...

"Gate Gourmet is understood to have been prepared to re-hire 397 of the dismissed workers".

The numbers do not quite add up, but it seems plain that the TGWU has sold out the majority of the locked-out workers' jobs.

The deal has yet to go to a mass meeting of the locked-out workers.

No doubt TGWU officials will put pressure on them to accept it. But all the evidence is that the deal is not a matter of salvaging a little from a hopeless situation.

According to the FT, "seven weeks after the dispute started, Gate Gourmet is still unable to supply a catering service for [BA]'s short-haul network in Europe".

And, as the baggage handlers' action at the start of the dispute showed, solidarity action at Heathrow can be rapidly effective.

This dispute is one of the cases where a union should be prepared to defy the law. In fact the TGWU could probably organise effective solidarity action within the law.

It could ballot other members at Heathrow on other issues - their own pay and conditions - and stay within the law, though everyone would know that the action was effective solidarity.

BA has sacked three of the baggage handlers who struck in solidarity. The TGWU legally could - and should - ballot for action to save their jobs.

Instead the FT is able to report: "The deal raised hopes [for the bosses] that further sympathy strikes at British Airways can also be avoided".