THE call has gone up in the Competition Commission report that three of BAA’s seven airports – two of its three in London, out of Gatwick, Stansted or Heathrow, and one in Scotland, either Glasgow or Edinburgh – must be sold off.
BAA is known as the airport proprietor which loses a big percentage of its passengers’ luggage, and whose main concern is to cut its workforce numbers as savagely as possible, regardless of the consequences for its passengers.
It presided over the Terminal 5 opening where its frantic desire to keep profits up and the number of workers down led to thousands of lost bags and absolute chaos.
Now with oil prices thrusting upwards, the whole of the air transport industry is bracing itself for the employers’ moves to cut millions of passenger flights, slash the number of airlines, massively increase air fares, and savagely cut staff numbers.
The demand that BAA be broken up is part of this ‘race to the bottom’ and is the preparation of a massive attack on airport workers and air passengers.
Under the banner of the need for more competition, a scenario is being created to present workers with an ultimatum, to either accept lower wages, worse conditions, the slashing of pensions and job losses or else mass sackings.
The Unite trade union yesterday voiced its serious concerns about this situation.
The union warned that the spectre of job losses and attacks on existing terms and conditions of employment would be the unacceptable reality of any break up.
Unite national officer, Brian Boyd, said: ‘When big business comes out in support of what now looks like the imminent break up of BAA, there seems to be no mention of the very real possibility of job losses, reduced terms and conditions of employment, and the stress that major announcements like this can bring to ordinary workers and their families.’
He added: ‘Last year industrial action at BAA over pensions was only averted by a commitment to embark on a full and thorough period of consultation with the trade unions. This being concluded, Unite was of the opinion that a period of stability for our members employed by BAA would prevail. This no longer seems to be the case.’
Correct. In place of a period of stability that the union leaders thought would come as a result of their betrayal of the struggle to maintain final salary pensions, has come a frantic move to break up BAA, and to rip up all union agreements.
Unite national secretary, Steve Turner, said: ‘Any attempt to break up BAA will be resisted. This union and our members will not sit back while the market plays games with their jobs and their terms and conditions of employment.
‘Airports are an essential part of the UK’s transport infrastructure, they are the gateway to our nation and further development and expansion is central to plans for economic growth and success.
‘If what is being said is that the privatisation of the UK’s airport infrastructure has failed, as it has following the sell off of many other areas of privatised infrastructure and utilities, perhaps now it is the time to bring this essential infrastructure back under public control. A break up of the BAA would see economies of scale removed and many of the benefits to passengers of retail operations being lost. We see no benefit to our members or the travelling public from any break up.’
Of course the employers are not admitting that privatisation of the UK’s airport infrastructure has failed – they want to further break apart and bust up what was privatised.
The answer of course is the renationalisation of the entire infrastructure of Britain’s airports.
Unite and the BAA trade unions must tell the employer that they will not accept the break up of BAA and that they will take strike action for the renationalisation of the entire airport infrastructure.
This is the only way forward not just for air transport but for transport nationally.
In place of the obscenity of privatised and deregulated bus services, a privatised railway that is a disaster, and a run-down and collapsing road haulage system, there must be a nationalised planned and integrated national transport system, including air transport, to meet the needs of the people, not the needs of private profiteers.
