ON August 10 2005 Gate Gourmet locked out and dismissed over 760 workers in a pre-planned operation designed to secure the introduction of their company ‘Survival Plan’.
The operation immediately ran into huge resistance, when thousands of BA staff walked out in sympathy with the locked-out workers, causing a BA share crash and losses of £15 million for the company.
The unofficial strikers were sent back to work by the TGWU leaders and subsequently two shop stewards were sacked.
Right from the start the TGWU leaders refused to make the Gate Gourmet dispute official.
TGWU leader Tony Woodley told the locked-out workers that Gate Gourmet were ‘gangster capitalists’, and 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.
However, on August 25 the TGWU, barely two weeks after the lock-out, 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, 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.’
The issue came to a head at the September 12 TUC Congress, which was lobbied by 300 Gate Gourmet workers, who entered the conference and received a rousing welcome from all of the delegates.
With the workers chanting ‘We want our jobs back’ and ‘No compulsory redundancies’, Congress unanimously passed a TGWU emergency motion moved by Woodley expressing 100 per cent support for the locked-out workers, and calling for the trade union movement to take every possible legal action to win the struggle.
With hundreds of locked-out workers chanting in the hall, Woodley put on his very best left face, declaring, ‘The anti-union laws are a charter for cowboy capitalists, a charter for bullying. They should go now. Right now, not tomorrow.’
This was said after the TGWU had already agreed to compulsory redundancies and to the Gate Gourmet ‘Survival Plan’.
Woodley declared: ‘If solidarity is a crime, then send us all to jail.’
Two weeks later the TGWU signed its deal with the company.
The Gate Gourmet management wrote a letter, dated October 20, to every one of the 144 out of the over 760 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 the locked-out workers giving up all of their employment rights and all legal claims that they may have against the company.
The seven-page ‘Compromise Agreement’ with the TGWU leaders spells 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 declares: ‘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 put themselves in the position of pressing all dismissed workers to sign the Compromise Agreement otherwise nobody would get their pittance.
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 TGWU leaders and the TUC agreed to hundreds of redundancies, including 144 compulsory sackings, and the company’s draconian anti-union ‘Survival Plan’.
There was no ballot of the locked-out workers on the deal.
Hundreds of workers refused to sign the Compromise Agreement and insisted on going to employment tribunals, and demanded the return of their jobs at their old terms and conditions.
The TGWU ran a campaign to get them to sign the Compromise Agreement, a campaign which is still running.
On January 6th 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 29th 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, 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%.
‘The number of hours lost in the first quarter due to staff sickness at the Heathrow South production unit fell by 58% relative to the previous year. The sickness rate at Gate Gourmet’s Heathrow South production unit is now 3%;
‘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% 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.
Thanks to Woodley and Co there is now super-exploitation at Gate Gourmet Heathrow, as well as over 500 workers sacked.
The TGWU membership can do without this kind of leadership.
Hardship payments must be resumed to the workers in dispute.
The dispute must be made official and a national demonstration must be called by the TGWU and the TUC to support them and lay the basis for defeating Gate Gourmet.