GATE Gourmet locked-out workers were stopped from picketing the Gate Gourmet plant yesterday by the Heathrow Airport police and by the British Airports Authority Airport Duty Manager.
Inspector Bogie told the pickets: ‘I am asking you to leave because you have been requested to leave by the Airport Duty Manager (ADM) under the by-laws.
‘This is not a recognised TGWU picket and for the future, in order to have a picket at this location you need to either be down under the banner of the TGWU as part of the original dispute, or seek permission for a demonstration through BAAA and the police by giving notice of your intention to demonstrate as is usual in these circumstances.’
When informed: ‘We are here under the first of these conditions’ Bogie replied: ‘You can’t prove that to me’.
Bogie was then informed: ‘We delivered a letter along with a copy of the High Court ruling to your Chief Inspector last Friday, explaining that the picket would be continuing today.’
Bogie responded; ‘In your letter it makes no mention of the TGWU or any affiliation to the TGWU. Therefore I am asking you to comply with the wishes of the ADM, and remove the demonstration from the airport.
Airport Duty Manager Simon Fraser said: ‘The High Court ruling applied to the TGWU. You are not here under a T&G guise. Until you can show that this is a TGWU dispute I am asking you to leave.’
Inspector Bogie then said: ‘For now I am asking you to leave under the 24 hour rule. It is now 2-25pm, please do not return within 24 hours.’
Locked-out Gate Gourmet workers Mohinder Virk said ‘We are not scared. It is my right. The dispute is not finished. The union is representing me in my employment tribunal and until then I have the right to picket.
‘Nothing has changed.
‘We are proud to stand firm fighting for our jobs. It is my right. The High Court said so.
‘We are expecting to hear any time when our employment tribunals are going to take place.
‘Gate Gourmet applied for a delay and the tribunal granted them a delay until the 28th March.
‘We know that we have a very strong case. We did nothing wrong. We stuck with the union. Now we want the union to stick with us.’
Kulwinder Desi said: ‘It is my right to picket, the police cannot stop us. We are TGWU members.’
‘I am disgusted that the union leaders have stopped paying us our hardship payments.
‘We want other TGWU branches and members to take up our fight.’
Meanwhile, at yesterday’s Scottish TUC Congress, Martin Carroll, chair of the T&G Scotland Regional Committee, used the union’s experience at Gate Gourmet last summer to highlight the injustice which flowed from the anti-union laws of the 1980s and 1990s.
‘On one side of that dispute we had seven hundred workers, mainly Asian women in low paid catering jobs, who objected to proposals to cut their wages and increase their hours,’ said Carroll. ‘On the other we had a powerful multi-national firm awarded a contract through the privatisation strategy of British Airways who arrogantly brushed aside the concerns of the workforce, dismissed them by megaphone, bullied and intimidated and flew in agency workers on even lower terms and conditions to replace the workers in dispute.’
Carroll said whilst employers could take their own form of secondary action by bringing in agency workers, as in Gate Gourmet, or shifting production, trade unions were hamstrung.
‘What does a father, brother or husband do when they see their daughter, wife or sister shamefully sacked?’ he said. ‘The law says they should do the unnatural thing. They should turn aside and they and their union should be penalised if they don’t.’