One thing is clear though: the magnificent solidarity of BA ground staff with Gate Gourmet workers has been a shock to all capitalist bosses in the UK. It was a rare treat to see odious exploiters like the boss of Ryanair wheeled onto TV programmes shaking their heads in disbelief that one group of workers would put their jobs at risk for another.

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From Revolutionary Perspective 36
Magazine of our sister organisation the Communist Worker' Organisation British Affiliate of International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party.

Airline Workers Fight Against Bosses' Terror

Solidarity Strikes at Heathrow

During August, while the media's attention was focussed on the government's latest anti-terrorist measures, yet another outrageous attack occurred at the hub of Britain's air transport system. The culprit is a little-known outfit which calls itself Gate Gourmet. Gate Gourmet, a fanatical follower of capitalism's latest Profit at any Price movement, is a shadowy concern in the pay of much larger organisations such as British Airways (BA) which it normally prefers to hide behind. However, on Thursday 11th August it came out into the open. Without any warning, up to 800 catering workers suddenly found themselves without the means to exist. They had been peremptorily sacked by a Gate Gourmet boss whilst peacefully sitting in the works canteen to protest against the savage cuts in wages and conditions the firm was trying to force upon them. Those who were not present to be sacked by a stripe suited gent holding a megaphone and flanked by heavies got a letter in the post the day after. Those who were ill or on holiday? Tough! Terrorism strikes indiscriminately however innocent the party.

Ever since 9/11, BA, along with most other international airline networks, has become increasingly desperate in the face of declining passenger confidence and dwindling profits. Typical of the fanatical worshipper of Profit at Any Price, BA has farmed out as much as possible of the low-margin side of its operations to even more unscrupulous followers of the profit system. When large companies start "contracting out" then the venture capitalist vultures come sniffing round. Gate Gourmet is owned by a US venture capitalist called Texas Pacific, which operates in 29 countries and employs 22 000 workers. It has a £1 billion annual turnover but its takeover of Gate Gourmet has run into the same post 9/11 problems facing the airlines. The only way these firms solve their profitability problems is to terrorise their staff by threats of redundancy. Under such threats Gate Gourmet workers last December accepted the elimination of the Christmas bonus and a wage freeze.

Meanwhile, BA itself has been responsible for vicious assaults on its own workforce, from compulsory redundancies, pay cuts and shift changes to massive robbery from the workers' pension fund. More than once, BA workers have been forced to draw on their collective reserves of resistance in order to lessen the impact of the attacks. They will need to do so again as the plan is to cut another £300m from staff costs by March 2007. As a reward for this carnage the chairman, Rod Eddington, received a knighthood from a grateful Labour Government.

In the meantime, Gate Gourmet bosses have been conducting a ruthless campaign to restore profits by cutting wages and introducing new shift patterns on what they thought would be an easy target: their largely female, 'ethnic minority' workforce. Who knows whether the Gate Gourmet workers were inspired by our government's calls that there must be no giving in to terrorism? In any case, they were united in refusing to submit to the bosses' demands. These included the complete abolition of overtime payment, swingeing pay cuts of almost 25% (drivers' wages to be reduced from £8 to £6.35 per hour), longer shifts and sick day entitlement reduced from 25 to 5 days.

Typically, of course, in the cowardly way of all terrorist organisations, Gate Gourmet drew up a secret plot to undermine the workers' solidarity and force them to submit. Some time before the direct attack several workers were 'promoted' to managerial positions, only to find they were being sacked a few weeks later when the bosses announced a 'pruning out' of managers in the organisation. At the same time the existing managers of this supposedly unprofitable business all got wage rises! It then emerged that Gate Gourmet had set up a company called Versa Logistics to employ workers (often from Eastern Europe) on temporary contracts at lower rates. Eric Born, the British boss of Gate Gourmet, is a director of Versa Logisitics. When the workers decided to exercise their democratic right to protest against this whole series of attacks the bosses used the surprise tactic of arbitrarily locking out the whole workforce. The plan was obviously to intimidate the majority of workers into accepting Gate Gourmet's conditions for re-employment whilst targeting anyone who stood out against them for permanent dismissal. (This is a revival of an old capitalist terror tactic against wage workers particularly favoured in the 1930's by bosses in the USA, which just happens to be the country of origin of Gate Gourmet today.)

However, it was the Gate Gourmet bosses who were surprised when the workers refused to give in to intimidation and retaliated by calling for support from their fellow workers in BA. To their eternal credit, 1000 BA ground staff, including check-in personnel as well as baggage handlers, did not hesitate to strike in solidarity against this terror tactic which, if allowed to succeed, they know will be used against them at a later date.

As we write these lines the struggle continues but it has already been weakened by the Transport and General Workers Union who have instructed BA workers to return to work. Gate Gourmet have been obliged to retreat and they are looking to reach some sort of settlement via 'arbitration', whilst still vindictively gunning for the 'ringleaders' of the resistance. They will now be waiting for the struggle to die down before finding another way of mounting an attack on the human beings whose labour power is essential for their profits.

One thing is clear though: the magnificent solidarity of BA ground staff with Gate Gourmet workers has been a shock to all capitalist bosses in the UK. It was a rare treat to see odious exploiters like the boss of Ryanair wheeled onto TV programmes shaking their heads in disbelief that one group of workers would put their jobs at risk for another. These complacent capitalists have assumed that workers in the UK are now too spineless to resist their increasingly savage attacks.

It also shows that workers cannot fight within the union framework. The workers might have shouted "T and G zindabad!" (long live the T and G) and the T and G might claim to be acting for the workers but the truth is that the T and G will organise the new contract with Gate Gourmet and will recommend a "compromise" with these sharks. The precise role of the union was underlined by the Labour MP who denounced the "troublemakers" amongst the workforce at Gate Gourmet and BA, whilst accusing the T and G of being "spineless". In other words, it was not doing what the capitalists demand of the unions, and that is that they preserve "normal working" whilst they can terrorise workers. It is only by abandoning the capitalist legality and going to other workers that we have the collective strength to fight back as the Gate Gourmet workers have shown us.

The remarkable resilience of a group of low-paid catering workers, coupled with the instant support they inspired from fellow workers, illustrates how the working class as a whole can fight back against the intimidation and terror tactics used by bosses who are increasingly desperate to revive declining profit rates.

ER

Internationalist Workers Group, canadian affiliate of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party.

Email: can...@ibpr.org