WHILST out campaigning yesterday, Gate Gourmet workers, now locked out for almost six months, spoke out very angrily about the unsigned letter just received from their union, the TGWU, threatening not to represent them at their employment tribunals.
Speaking at the building workers Terminal five picket line early yesterday morning, Mrs Lakhinder Saran told News Line: ‘We are happy to support the Terminal five strikers, their struggle is important. Why should people be paid differently? We hope that they will come to our conference this Sunday.’
She added: ‘With this letter the company and the union leaders are telling us to sign the Compromise Agreement and the Survival Plan to break our backs and cut our wages and to give their children a luxury life.’
Mrs Jasbir Gupta said: ‘When I read the letter from the T&G I was shocked. It’s disgraceful. They said if there is no case they would not represent us. That’s disgusting.
‘We know we’ve all got a case. Some of us were at home when they sacked us, some on holiday, some locked in the canteen; I think it’s just another tactic to bully people into signing the Compromise Agreement.’
Later yesterday morning, a campaigning team visited Greenford Bus Garage. Buying a ticket, TGWU member Francis McMahon said: ‘I want to know what’s happened to these fellow members.
‘What I’ve heard is not right, these companies have to be resisted and the union must defend its members’.
Another bus worker Rashid Khan bought his ticket and said: ‘The union should back these members they’ve paid subs and the union should stand up for them, not accept this rubbish.
‘This union leadership keeps stabbing us in the back too, we can’t accept it. They’re two-faced.’
Pritam Brar also bought a ticket saying: ‘What Gate Gourmet did is wrong, sacking people without reason. What the union leaders did is especially wrong. Tony Woodley has taken the side of management – Woodley has to go.’
Raksha Sharma said: ‘This letter from the TGWU leaders just shows that they are desperate to make us sign the Compromise Agreement.’
