Thousands of workers at Heathrow Airport are to stage a series of fresh strikes in the coming weeks in a long-running dispute over the company’s decision to ‘fire and rehire’ its entire workforce, cutting pay and reducing conditions.
Unite, the UK’s principal aviation union, has announced that there will be 41 strikes over a 25-day period this spring.
The targeted strike action, which is to run from Friday April 2 to Sunday April 25, will involve engineering, airside operations, land-side operations, fire service, campus security and central terminal operations.
Heathrow’s passenger numbers have fallen to the lowest level since the 1960s with just 461,000 people travelling through the west London airport in February.
But earlier this year Heathrow bosses demanded more Border Force officials to bust the ‘staggering’ six-hour immigration queues due to coronavirus checks.
Meanwhile, the EU will confirm today that British holidaymakers are to be welcomed on the Continent as it unveils its ‘vaccine passport’ scheme.
The bloc publishing details of its ‘digital green pass’ is piling pressure on transport secretary Grant Shapps to green-light foreign travel in time for summer.
Thousands of workers at Heathrow Airport, are to stage a series of fresh strikes in the coming weeks in a long-running dispute over the company’s decision to ‘fire and rehire’ its entire workforce, slashing their pay and reducing their conditions
Industrial action at Heathrow Airport started last December and has continued this year.
Unite officer Wayne King said: ‘These strike days are avoidable, yet Heathrow is not listening. Heathrow Airport Ltd (HAL) railroaded these pay cuts through at a staggering speed, leaving thousands of workers on less pay just before Christmas.
‘But while Unite put forward clear proposals in February to resolve the dispute, the company has yet to give any kind of formal response.’
Unite said the strikes will cause ‘considerable disruption’ and will show the airport’s contingency plans are not fit for purpose.
Mr King added: ‘There is a fortnight before Unite’s spring strike offensive begins and HAL management could still resolve this dispute if it has the will to do so.’
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: ‘Fire and rehire is ripping through our workplaces like a disease.
‘Weak law lets bad bosses force through brutal changes to contracts, sometimes taking thousands of pounds off wages that families need to get by.
‘It’s a disgraceful practice that’s outlawed in much of Europe and should be here.
‘Unite is fighting for UK workers to be treated with the same decency. We won’t stop until the law is changed to protect working people from attack.’
A spokeswoman for Heathrow Airport said: ‘Every frontline colleague has accepted the new offer which pays above the market rate and London Living wage. Nobody has been fired and re-hired and indeed 48 per cent saw no change or experienced a pay increase.
Heathrow’s passenger numbers have fallen to the lowest level since the 1960s with just 461,000 people travelling through the west London airport in February
‘In addition, we have also launched a business recovery incentive payment to all colleagues which offers a renumeration reward if the airport has recovered sufficiently in two years’ time.
‘Despite losses of over £2bn since the start of the pandemic, our approach has protected jobs and avoided huge swathes of compulsory redundancies.
‘These strikes unnecessarily threaten further damage to the business, but nevertheless, we have activated extensive contingency plans which will keep the airport open and operating safely over strike days.’
Heathrow’s passenger numbers have fallen to the lowest level since the 1960s with just 461,000 people travelling through the west London airport in February – the lowest monthly total since 1966 and a 92 per cent drop compared with February 2020.
The airport blamed the decrease on the ban on non-essential travel, quarantine rules and the requirement for pre-departure and post-arrival coronavirus testing.
It said it is working with Boris Johnson’s taskforce to reopen international leisure travel from May 17 but warned that the ‘biggest single concern is the ability of Border Force to be able to cope with additional passenger numbers’.
Earlier this month airport boss Emma Gilthorpe called for more resources so that all the border desks could be manned to reduce the waiting time customers are facing.
She told the Commons Home Affairs Committee today that Border Force was already under a ‘huge amount of pressure’ at the airport and there were ‘unacceptable levels of queueing’.
The aim is for EU passengers to wait no longer than 25 minutes, or 45 minutes for non-EU travellers, at the border.
But Ms Gilthorpe said: ‘We are seeing significant pressure on the border and we are seeing very long queues and that is a worry.’
Earlier this month airport boss Emma Gilthorpe called for more resources
She later added: ‘Now it is not uncommon to see queues of three hours and we have had queues extending out to nearly six hours on occasion.
‘The extra layers that have been introduced are crippling the resourcing capability that Border Force has in place.’
Earlier this year chaos struck the airport as passengers queued for six hours to get through passport control with no social distancing, food or water.
Heathrow pinned the blame for the delays on the Home Office, saying Border Force desks were not sufficiently staffed to deal with arrivals and Covid-19 checks.
The Home Office vehemently denied that only two Border Force staff were working, stating that employees work in socially-distanced bubbles, and that other desks were open for arrivals.
Covid compliance checks – such as ensuring travellers have filled in a passenger locator form, have pre-departure test results, can justify their travel and whether they need to go into hotel quarantine after coming from a red list country – need to be made digital ‘rapidly’ so that E-gates can reopen and boost capacity, she added.
Ms Gilthorpe told MPs: ‘We need a systematic and sustained focus on how we are going to resource so we can stop passengers having to queue for unacceptable lengths of time.
‘We do all we can at Heathrow … but ultimately, we need to get flow moving through the border far, far better than we have at the moment.’
Meanwhile the EU will confirm today that British holidaymakers are to be welcomed on the Continent as it unveils its ‘vaccine passport’ scheme.
Piling pressure on transport secretary Grant Shapps to green-light foreign travel in time for summer, the bloc is publishing details of its ‘digital green pass’.
The EU’s passport will allow those from non-EU countries to travel to the bloc if they are ‘in a position to present certificates under a system deemed sufficiently reliable’, according to a leaked document obtained by Bloomberg.
Dates are not specified but the document states the digital pass will also allow travel for those who have tested negative or who can prove they have gained a level of immunity having recovered from Covid.
Infections in the UK will also need to remain low for Britons to be allowed to travel to the EU.
However, in another boost, the document acknowledges that individual countries will be able to strike deals with Britain should the EU-wide scheme falter, mirroring last year’s ‘travel corridors’.
Greece, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus have signalled they are ready to arrange bilateral deals to welcome vaccinated Britons or those who test negative from mid-May.
Mr Shapps is leading a global travel taskforce that is looking into the use of vaccine passports for safely re-opening travel.
Hit taskforce will report by April 12, the date when an announcement will be made on when travel can re-open, with May 17 being the earliest possible date.