LAST Monday’s branch meeting of BASSA T&G cabin crew, to gain their approval for the deal agreed by TGWU leader Woodley and BA boss Walsh, had to be cancelled and rescheduled for next Monday, after support for the Woodley-Walsh deal could not be guaranteed.
Workers were angry that their 96 per cent vote for strike action, on an 80 per cent turn-out, was just ignored and rubbished by Woodley, in his stampede to save the day for BA, to become Walsh’s hero of the hour.
Workers said that only three of their dozen demands had been addressed positively, and insisted that the action should have gone ahead, and that their democratic vote should not have been diminished in the way that it was.
Next Monday’s meeting is set to be a stormy one, especially after the resignation of two leading members of the cabin crew branch committee that was pressured into accepting the Walsh-Woodley deal by nine votes to three.
Workers are saying that if Woodley loses the vote and his deal is rejected he must resign his position as TGWU general secretary, and that the strike action must be reimposed.
Workers are rightly insisting that Woodley was elected to fight for and represent the views of the TGWU’s membership.
His rejection of a 96 per cent vote for strike action to reach a sell-out deal with Walsh means that he sees himself as a junior partner to Walsh, with both of them putting the interests of BA’s shareholders first.
Next Monday he must be reminded that he was elected to represent and fight for the demands of his members, and that if BA will not meet the just demands of its workers it must be challenged, taken on and defeated as the members wished.
If it’s a question that the company is so crisis-ridden that it cannot meet the demands of the workforce then it should be renationalised and this time put under workers’ control.
In fact, Woodley’s conduct in this dispute is not new. It is a continuation of his agreeing to the shutting down of MG Rover, and his sell-out of the locked-out gate Gourmet workers.
Gate Gourmet sacked its entire workforce, and put them outside the gate.
Woodley’s response was to tell the BA baggage handlers that they must go back to,work when they came out in support of the GG workers, and were on the point of winning the dispute.
He then refused to recognise the dispute as official, and even to pay dispute pay to the locked out workers.
What he did assure workers was that he would not discuss the company’s ‘survival programme’ until all of the locked-out workers were restored to their jobs.
He reneged on that pledge. With his membership locked out he agreed a ‘compromise’ deal involving over 600 sackings, and agreement on the company’s survival programme.
He supported the company, and then cut the hardship pay of the hundreds of workers that would not accept the sell out.
Recently he has told the TGWU’s lawyers not to appeal the verdict of the initial hearing of the Gate Gourmet Employment tribunal that the workers were sacked for taking unofficial strike action.
The workers are having to mount their own appeal without the backing of the TGWU’s legal service.
Remember this the next time Woodley sheds crocodile tears over the way the Gate Gourmet workers have been treated.
The bottom line is that Woodley betrayed his members at Gate Gourmet and made a deal that gave the boss everything he wanted.
Now he is doing the same at Heathrow in the case of the BA cabin crews.
He will do the same for the workers who are to be transferred to Heathrow’s Terminal 5
The best thing that TGWU members can do is dump Woodley to put an end to the policy of helping the boss and betraying the workers.
There is no doubt that a new leadership is required in the TGWU, and many other of the TUC trade unions. Only the WRP is building the type of leadership that is necessary for workers to win the struggles that are coming up.
