THE following emergency resolution was carried unanimously at last year’s TUC Congress.
The resolution was the TUC’s response to the Gate Gourmet management’s locking out of over 700 workers on August 10 2005. They were sacked by megaphone in order to bring in a new ‘slave labour’ workforce that would work to their ‘survival plan’, doubling production, and cutting wages.
The resolution stated: ‘Congress records its profound anger at the shameful treatment of 667 workers sacked by Gate Gourmet catering at Heathrow on 10 August for objecting to the hiring of temporary staff while permanent staff faced redundancy. Evidence indicates that management engineered this dispute in order to replace existing staff with workers on worse terms and conditions, without due notice or redundancy pay.
‘Congress applauds the Gate Gourmet workers who continue to fight for their jobs in the face of contemptible attacks on their character, their community and their union.
‘This case exposes defects in UK law repeatedly condemned under international laws; and calls into question the contracting out of services and the use of agency labour to undercut permanent jobs.
‘Congress therefore calls upon:
‘i) Gate Gourmet management to act in good faith to reach a fair and acceptable settlement to this dispute;
‘ii) British Airways not to sign a forward supply contract with Gate Gourmet until a mutually satisfactory agreement is reached with the TGWU and to make preparation for alternative sources of catering services;
‘iii) the Government to amend the law: to permit lawful supportive action, simplify balloting procedures, protect strikers from dismissal, and bar the replacement of workers in dispute; and also to seek implementation urgently of the EU temporary agency worker directive; and
‘iv) the General Council and affiliates to support members at Gate Gourmet by all legal means, to seek international support, and to unite trade unionists in a campaign for just and ILO-compliant employment law.’
Tony Woodley (Transport and General Workers’ Union) moved Emergency Motion 1.
He said: ‘Colleagues, I will start at the outset by saying that there is no doubt at all that this is the most important debate we are going to have during this week. It is not just about policy, or indeed just about rhetoric, it is about a fight for justice going on right now for ordinary run-of-the-mill working men and women. These people need our 100 per cent wholehearted support.
‘I will ask Congress again to pay tribute to the working men and women who are battling their socks off for their jobs, our people in Gate Gourmet, comrades. That is what being in a trade union is really about, fighting for people, real people with a real problem, not worrying about mixing with the good or, indeed, the great. Let me say to my members and our comrades in the balcony, not just on behalf of the T&G but on behalf of the whole of the TUC, your fight is our fight and, as you can see, we are all genuinely with you and we are doing our best to help you here.
‘With this in mind I would just like to take the opportunity to thank Brendan Barber. The amount of time he has put in to try and help us find a resolution has been staggering. Brendan, thank you. I am grateful.
‘Many of us are used to stories of bad behaviour by big business and, indeed, bad bosses but at Gate Gourmet we have a renegade venture capitalist company, headed up by American union-busting bosses, plotting for more than a year to sack low-paid workers, working behind the scenes to provoke a dispute to justify that sacking, secretly recruiting agency labour on still lower rates of pay, and locking out our members in the canteen on the day that they sacked them. They sacked them by megaphone on the orders of a cowboy capitalist from Texas, and I do not mean George Bush.
‘Comrades, this is truly the unacceptable face of globalisation, a man who insults our intelligence by saying that our members, ordinary working men and women just like us, are all acting like lunatic troublemakers, 200 militants in a small plant.’
‘If it was not so serious, I would say, “Don’t make me laugh.” It is unbelievable what they will say to justify their unjustifiable actions.
‘Our members are just hard-working, decent men and women, set up, victimised, and sacked, for no good reason other than to cut costs at their expense. It is an absolute disgrace that this can happen in our country today. No decent boss, no worker, no politician, could ever support such bad behaviour in our country.
‘It is not good enough just to condemn the bad bosses. We have to ask ourselves, how can they get away with such bad behaviour in 21st century Britain? How can they conduct industrial relations on the basis of deceit and, indeed, intimidation?
‘It certainly would not be allowed to happen in any other state in Europe. The anti-trade union laws that all previous speakers have spoken about on the statute book are clearly a green light for greed, a charter for this cowboy capitalist, and a licence for bullying. They should go; not tomorrow, they should go now.
‘When I mentioned solidarity action, all the commentators and, indeed, the politicians who have nothing to say about exploitation, who will not lift a finger to help low-paid Asian workers from mistreatment, were outraged when T&G members at Heathrow Airport walked out in support of our sacked workers; even Lord Reece-Morgan at the time said I should be sacked or sent to prison.
‘If solidarity is a crime, then send us all to jail, your Lordship, because that is what we may have to do to fight back for our rights in this country.
‘The Movement was built on solidarity and we know that is why Thatcher made solidarity unlawful, to make us ineffective. We have to be determined now, comrades, in this Movement to move on from the 1990s when our Movement was too weak to help colleagues in distress and difficulty. How can it be right that T&G members in Gate Gourmet cannot support their sacked brothers and sisters in struggle whilst at exactly the same time bosses can fly in scabs from any part of Europe with the full backing of the law?
‘How can this be right in Britain today? We do need to redraft those laws, we do need to make solidarity action a basic human right, and we do need to campaign now.
‘Comrades, we are endeavouring to find a solution to the Gate Gourmet dispute but, be clear, you do not plan action like this to take people back to work just because of an argument. I would like to thank many of you for the support you have already given us but we do need further financial support for our sacked workers, and we do need to make sure that every MP and every part of our country understands what is going on here. It must be understood that in a civilised society this action cannot be allowed to go on.
‘Colleagues, we have to show this government that the time for waffling over employment law is over. We have to stop these outrages happening again and turn round and make those changes.
‘If we make the changes, then that is the response, the only response, that is worthy to obtain justice for our brothers and sisters who I am privileged to represent and who are here with us today from Gate Gourmet. Thank you, comrades.’
However, despite the decision in the unanimously carried resolution for ‘the General Council and affiliates to support members at Gate Gourmet by all legal means, to seek international support, and to unite trade unionists in a campaign for just and ILO-compliant employment law’, the TUC did not call a single action to support the locked-out workers whose struggle dominated last year’s Congress.
What should have been done was shown by the action of the Irish TUC on Friday December 9 2005, when it had a national demonstration over the locking out of Irish Ferry workers and their replacement by scabs.
Over 100,000 turned out on the demonstration through Dublin and Irish Ferries were forced back.
The Irish TUC put the British TUC to shame.
All of Tony Woodley’s brave words about ‘These people need our 100 per cent wholehearted support’; and ‘Your fight is our fight and as you can see we are all genuinely with you and we are doing our best to help you here’; and, ‘If solidarity is a crime, then send us all to jail, your Lordship, because that is what we may have to do to fight back for our rights in this country’; were in fact completely hollow and cynical.
This was proven by the fact that two weeks after the TUC Congress Brendan Barber and Tony Woodley agreed to the notorious Compromise Agreement with Gate Gourmet.
This agreed to over 400 redundancies, 144 of them compulsory, and that workers should not proceed with Employment Tribunals or other legal actions on charges such as ‘false imprisonment’, ‘racial discrimination’, or ‘assault’ against this rapacious employer.
No wonder this year’s 2006 TUC report has only two brief mentions of what was and is the most important trade union dispute in Britain for many years.
In his introduction to the report Brendan Barber writes of workers on the May Day march 2006: ‘They highlighted the continuing inequalities at work and the injustices suffered by workers like those at Gate Gourmet, sacked by megaphone announcement and engaged in a protracted battle for justice last autumn, and at Peugeot this summer, where a multinational company found it easier and cheaper to dismiss UK workers than to do so to their colleagues elsewhere in Europe.’
The other mention is in one paragraph in the section of the report called ‘Regional Dimension’, that ‘The Sertuc Regional Council provided support to the T&G during the dispute with Gate Gourmet as it sought justice for the 700 low-paid, mostly Asian, women workers who were undervalued.’
Contrast the emergency resolution and Woodley’s brave speech to the tiny references in the report and the fact that there was no action at all, except a sell-out.
In fact, right from the start the TGWU leaders refused to make the Gate Gourmet dispute official.
Publicly, the Tony Woodley policy for the dispute was two-faced.
He told the locked-out workers that Gate Gourmet were ‘gangster capitalists’, adding correctly that the whole country was behind the workers, and continued that the union was determined that before any changes could be made, every locked-out worker must be returned to work on their current terms and conditions.
At the same time, he told the ‘gangster capitalists’ that he would support the company’s ‘Survival Plan’ which required huge changes in the terms and conditions of employment and mass redundancies.
He predicted that the dispute would last two weeks but was confounded when the locked-out workers revealed their determination to fight until they won their jobs back.
His solution to this contradiction was to drop the demand that the company must return everybody to work, and to try and turn the dispute into a campaign to pressure the Labour government into amending the industrial relations laws in the future to allow secondary action.
The government, however, laughed in his face, with Blair stating that no Labour government would ever do anything of the sort.
On August 25 2005, two weeks before the TUC Congress, the TGWU, in the person of Brendan Gold, and the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, signed a framework agreement with Gate Gourmet agreeing to its survival plan, accepting that there would be almost 700 redundancies and agreeing to compulsory redundancies.
The ‘gangster capitalist’ company went as far as to express its gratitude to Brendan Barber on its website for his role in supporting the company in the negotiations that had taken place.
On September 9 2005 just before the TUC Congress, in the fifth week of the dispute, the TGWU issued a press statement confirming that ‘it has agreed with Gate Gourmet selection criteria for redundancy and the process of ratifying the company’s rescue plans.’
Gate Gourmet made the point that the selection criteria were for compulsory redundancies.
Woodley’s ‘heroic’ speech was a cover-up for what was really happening, forced on him by 300 Gate Gourmet workers lobbying the TUC Congress with many of them in the hall chanting ‘We want our jobs back’ and ‘No compulsory redundancies’.
The Gate Gourmet management wrote a letter, dated October 20, to every one of the 144 out of 701 locked-out workers that it intended to make compulsorily redundant.
It invoked the ‘Principal Agreement’ that Gate Gourmet had made with the TGWU leaders. This involved all 701 workers giving up all of their employment rights and all legal claims that they may have against the company.
In the Gate Gourmet letter, Andy Cook, Gate Gourmet’s director of Human Resources, told the sacked workers that under the agreement for the resolution of the dispute agreed with the TGWU, the ‘company is now proposing to offer you a compensation payment, equivalent to voluntary severance in full and final settlement of any claims relating to your employment with the company or your dismissal on or about 10/11 August 2005. This payment will only be made to you if you agree to enter into a compromise agreement.’
The seven page ‘Compromise Agreement’ with the TGWU leaders spelt out: ‘The agreement will prevent you from taking any legal action that you may be entitled to bring in the future which is connected to any extent directly or indirectly with the dismissal of the dismissed employees. . .’
Further it declared: ‘Since you will receive a compensation payment. . . in return for the ending of your employment, you expressly acknowledge that there is to be a complete and permanent ending of your relationship with the Company and you will not apply for employment with the company, or any associated Company at any stage and that there are no circumstances under which the company or any Associate Company could be required to consider any application for employment by you.’
Further: ‘You agree that the Agreement is conditional upon all of the dismissed employees signing and returning compromise agreements together with signed copies of the Advisers certificates in the form attached to the Company by 16 November 2005 save any variation agreed by the Company to the End Date.’
The TGWU leaders agreed to press all dismissed workers to sell their rights otherwise nobody would get their pittance. A novel form of blackmail!
Further: ‘In the event that any of the above conditions are not complied with in full, the Company shall be entitled at its option to treat this agreement as null and void and without legal effect.’
The compromise agreement was never put to a ballot of the locked-out workers.
The TGWU told workers that they should sign adding that workers who would not sign would not necessarily be given access to union solicitors to fight tribunal cases, since the union had to consider whether these cases were winnable.
Hundreds of workers refused to sign the Compromise Agreement and insisted on going to employment tribunals, and demanded the return of their jobs on their old terms and conditions.
For this reason many locked-out workers went to private solicitors and the TGWU only put in its 700 tribunal applications one day before the time limit for making claims.
The TGWU ran a campaign to get them to sign the Compromise Agreement, a campaign which is still running. In fact the workers opposition to the deal blew it up leaving Gate Gourmet and the TGWU leaders scrambling to get as many locked-out workers to sign as they could.
On January 6, the TGWU leaders stopped all hardship payments to those who would not sign the Compromise Agreement.
The TGWU leadership first of all tried to deny that the payments had been stopped.
On Friday March 3, General Secretary Tony Woodley wrote to Mary O’Brien of Region 1 ACTS branch: ‘Thank you for your letter dated 2 February. I am able to advise you that Region 1 have, subsequent to your letter, sent out a further hardship payment. So it is inaccurate that the hardship payment has stopped.’
However on March 21, Harry Timpson, the Finance Officer of Region 1, wrote a letter to one of the locked-out ladies saying: ‘I informed you that as you are taking your case through an industrial tribunal, that no payments after the 6th January would be forthcoming in your case.
‘You are appealing against this ruling and quote a letter of 3-3-06 from Brother T Woodley General Secretary to Sister Mary O’Brien of Region 1 ACTS branch which you say contradicts me.’
The result of the appeal was a letter from Barry Camfield, the acting Regional Secretary, of March 29 which stated: ‘The details of your particular circumstances have been referred to me and having reviewed them, and after consultation with other National colleagues, I have to advise that I am not in a position to vary the decision previously given to you. Therefore, no further hardship payments will be made in your case.’
On April 20 2006, Eric Born, managing director of Gate Gourmet UK and Ireland, informed the world just what the ‘survival plan’ agreed with the TGWU had meant for the company and its workers.
He said: ‘The number of economy class bar trolleys packed at the Heathrow South unit has increased from 34 per employee per day in August 2005 to 53 per employee per day in March 2006 – an improvement of 56 per cent.
‘The number of hours lost in the first quarter due to staff sickness at the Heathrow South production unit fell by 58 per cent relative to the previous year. The sickness rate at Gate Gourmet’s Heathrow South production unit is now 3 per cent;
‘As a result of improved productivity and a lower sickness rate, the number of paid overtime hours required to be worked has fallen by 76 per cent in the first quarter 2006 compared to 2005.’
Eric Born added: ‘There is still a long way to go but we are now seeing real improvements in productivity at Gate Gourmet. The changes we’ve been making to working practices are clearly paying off.
‘Sickness is falling and productivity is rising. Of course, we have to keep up the momentum to continually make improvements in both to secure the future of our company and the jobs that go with it.
‘As a result of the progress we are now making, I am hopeful that Gate Gourmet UK & Ireland will break even this financial year,’ said Born.
Since last April the screws on the current Gate Gourmet workforce have been further tightened.
Thanks to Woodley and Co there is now super-exploitation at Gate Gourmet Heathrow, as well as over 500 workers sacked.
The TGWU and TUC membership can do without this kind of leadership.
Over 100 locked-out workers are going forward with their tribunal cases.
This TUC Congress must see to it that the wrong that has been done to these workers is put right.
Hardship payments must be resumed to the workers in dispute immediately.
The dispute must be made official and a national demonstration must be called by the TGWU and the TUC to support them and demand that they be reinstated under their original terms and conditions.
The locked-out workers must be congratulated for refusing to accept betrayal and carrying on with their vital struggle.
The 2006 TUC must give the locked-out workers its full support, so that the struggle is won.
Their victory will be a victory for all workers in the UK.
