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The Economic and Political Weekly
October 8, 2005
Heathrow Strike and Asian Workforce
The Gate Gourmet, a catering company that supplies in-flight meals to
British Airways, dismissed 670 workers most of whom were Indian women, via
megaphone at Heathrow airport on August 10. The subsequent wildcat action
and spontaneous show of solidarity, which brought the airport to a
standstill is rarely witnessed in today's Britain due to the anti-union
legislation introduced by the Margaret Thatcher government. There is a
strong tradition of Asian workers fighting for their rights in the local
areas surrounding Heathrow and some major industrial strikes have been led
by Asian women.
Arif Azad
In August 2005 Heathrow airport was brought to a standstill by the wildcat
industrial action of 1,000 baggage handlers primarily of south Asian
origin that was precipitated by the sacking of 670 mostly Asian women
workers by megaphone at the Gate Gourmet, a catering company that supplies
in-flight meals to the British Airways (BA). This industrial action caught
BA bosses by surprise and they were quick to off-load the blame onto the
Gate Gourmet for precipitating the industrial action. While BA and the Gate
Gourmet played the blame game, media coverage rested largely on the
unforeseen woes faced by holidaymakers during peak holiday season. It was
only two days later that liberal media broadsheets began to focus on the
tough anti-union practices of Gate Gourmet, which resulted in arbitrary
sackings and the related issues of privatisation, ill effects of
outsourcing, anti-union bias of employment laws and the fragility of the
low-paid migrant labour force.
Although BA accused the Gate Gourmet of torching the fuse that led to
wildcat action, the origins of the strike are rooted in the Siamese twins
of headlong privatisation and outsourcing represented by BA and Gate
Gourmet. Libby Purves, columnist for the Times newspaper, put the roots of
the current dispute in a shared history and traced BA difficulties to
tripping over its outsourced shoe-laces. It all began in 1997 when BA
outsourced its in-flight food provision arm to the private catering
company, the Gate Gourmet. The catering company changed hands in 2003 when
it was bought off by a US equity firm Texas Pacific known for turning
around ailing businesses through aggressive cost-cutting and union-busting
practices.
Following the trail of its US practices the Gate Gourmet dismissed 670
workers mostly women of Indian origin on August 10 via megaphone. When
news of sackings spread to other baggage handlers and check-in staff at
Heathrow airport most of them related to the sacked workers by ties of
blood, neighbourhood, friendship and matrimony they downed their tools in
sympathy, bringing to a halt the entire British Airways operation. This
spontaneous show of solidarity, rarely witnessed in todays Britain in the
wake of tough anti-union legislation introduced by the Margaret Thatcher
government, forced the Transport and General Workers (T and G) union bosses
to go along with the striking workers at Heathrow. However, on August 12
baggage handlers at Heathrow airport called off the strike when talks
between the Gate Gourmet managers and T and G union officials got underway
to resolve the issue. Earlier on, the T and G union had declared the
Heathrow action as unofficial under pressure from BA managers, advising its
striking members to dribble back to work.
The long chain of events which led to the dismissal of largely Indian
catering workers is an illustration of global capitals aggressive tactics
and its rights-averse expansion to other parts of the world. Memos leaked
to the media clearly establish that the US-owned Gate Gourmet had planned
all along to use the excuse of a strike action to replace its largely Asian
workforce with a lower-paid and cheaper east European labour force. To
achieve this end, the Gate Gourmet was closely involved in floating another
company, Versa Logistics, eight months earlier, which supplied it with the
first batch of 130 seasonal workers, triggering the workers protest that
led to megaphone sackings. The sacked Asian workers told the Guardian
newspaper that, even before the callous megaphone sacking on August 10, the
Gate Gourmet had been engaged in slowly, and systematically downgrading
terms of the contract like hourly rate of pay, sickness pay entitlement,
annual bonuses and holiday entitlement over the past few months. This
pattern of downgrading working conditions parallels anti-union tactics
pursued by the Gate Gourmet in the US labour market, as revealed by the
daily Guardian. The Gate Gourmet is the second largest airline catering
company, providing 195 million meals each year and employing 22,000 people.
What marks this industrial action is the unprecedented solidarity and
militancy shown by Asian workers to demand their rights to dignity and a
liveable wage. This is hardly new to the Asian workers who have suffered an
erosion of working conditions in their places of employment over the years.
Indeed, there is a strong tradition of Asian workers fighting for their
rights in the local areas surrounding Heathrow. The first industrial action
undertaken by the largely Indian migrant women workers at Heathrow was in
1975 when 450 of them went on strike for two weeks in protest over low pay
and intolerable working conditions. Then, as now, the official union
declared the strike unofficial. The striking women resumed work after a
week under intense pressure from the official union. This was only possible
after winning major concessions on working conditions.
Heathrow and the Asian workforce have had a mutual bond ever since the
1950s when migrant south Asians living in Southall, Hounslow, Ealing and
Hayes began to take up jobs at Heathrow. The jobs on offer largely
concentrated in catering and baggage handling departments are low-paid
and unskilled involving long working hours with no career prospects. In the
late 1950s and 1960s, when the first wave of migrants from India and
Pakistan began to congregate in Southall and adjoining areas, there were
plenty of jobs on offer in factories. With the gradual closure of factories
in Southall and neighbouring areas during the Thatcher era, Heathrow
airport gradually became the dominant employer of the Asian workforce in
the area, thus tying the local economy and Heathrow airport in a bond of
mutual dependence. Unsurprisingly the local Asians have figured prominently
in all the previous industrial disputes, be it at Wynuna Corset Sewing
Factory (1972), the Perivale Gutterman strike (1973), first Heathrow strike
(1975), the Hillingdon hospital cleaners strike (1995) or the Lufthansa Sky
chef catering company strike in 1998.
Nationally, Jayaben Desi, a sacked worker at Grunswick film processing
factory made history when she led a strike action which drew national
notice in 1977. Since then, there have been major industrial strikes led by
Asian women. Few major industrial actions involving Asians were the Chix
bubble gum factory strike in Slough (1979) and the Burnsall strike in
Birmingham (1992). In all these strikes led by Asian women, community
solidarity provided the starch of strike action. In almost all the labour
rights struggles, the local community stood firmly behind the strikers
while they struggled to get the mainstream trade union movement involved in
the industrial disputes. The current industrial action by Asian women too
has sparked off a flurry of public meetings and formation of community
support groups in Southall to highlight the issue of chronic unemployment
(which is higher than the national average for Asians, particularly
Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) and the injustice done to the sacked workers.
Any downsizing plan conceived at Heathrow airport is inherently fatal to
the well-being of south Asian communities living in the adjoining areas of
Southall, Hounslow and Hayes.
The Gate Gourmet fiasco and resulting brave industrial action by the Asian
women is already precipitating an awareness of the human cost of the
monomania of outsourcing and privatisation. This is observable in the
amount of newspaper space being accorded to the analysis of different
aspects of this industrial dispute and its wider ramifications for
industrial relations and the economy of largely Asian-dominated areas of
Southall, Hounslow and Ealing. Impressed by the unprecedented solidarity
demonstrated by Asian workers, Tony Woodley, the secretary of the Transport
and Workers Union, has renewed his call for abolishing the clause
forbidding secondary action from the employment legislation. He argues in
his article published in the Guardian that sympathy strikes should be
reappointed in the employment relations legislation, which was changed in
favour of business interests under Thatchers government. Lately this view
has received high-profile endorsement from former Labour minister lord Roy
Hattersley who justified the use of secondary action, in his comment for
the daily Guardian, as a rightful and justifiable tactic in the armoury of
trade unions in the age of headlong, and thus far unresisted, erosion of
workers rights.
Talks between the T and G union and Gate Gourmet are continuing without any
dramatic breakthrough in sight. On August 20, the Gate Gourmet legal
strategy of seeking injunction to stop the striking workers from picketing
failed. Meanwhile the gurdawaras in Southall have become the site of
pilgrimage for all trade union bosses and local members of parliament to
offer support and encouragment to the sacked workers largely Indian
women. According to press reports the BA has renewed its contract with the
Gate Gourmet on the condition that the dispute with the sacked workers is
resolved. In an effort to settle the dispute, the Gate Gourmet has offered
redundancy packages to the workers. This is a significant victory as the
Gate Gourmets initial action of megaphone sackings was intended to avoid
the redundancy payment package to workers. This may not satisfy all the
demands of workers and large-scale redundancies may impact adversely on the
local economy, but the heroic struggle of Asian women workers has
spotlighted the issues of workers on the national scene. The hopes raised
by the heroic action of Asian women were dashed at the recent annual
conference of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in London. Both the prime
minister, Tony Blair, and chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, warned
trade unions not to expect any special favours from the Labour government.
For those fighting in the cause of workers there is a long fight ahead, as
demonstrated by the Heathrow strike.
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