‘The union is not paying us hardship money, we can’t get Jobseekers Allowance and we can’t get another job. What does the union think I should do, sell my house and sleep on the footpath?’
Mrs Parmjeet Sidhu was speaking to News Line yesterday on the picket line at Heathrow Airport where the Gate Gourmet locked-out workers have picketed since August 10th last year.
Mrs. J. Dhillon said: ‘It’s very hard for us but we are going to win this fight.
‘The company and the union leaders did a deal behind our backs we are not going to accept it, we are all going to our employment tribunals and win our claim for unfair dismissal.’
Parmjeet continued: ‘I am very upset, our whole lives have been upset, Gate Gourmet chose us without reason to be in the 144 compulsory redundancies and the union leaders supported them in doing so. In the beginning they said we all came out together and we’ll all go back together.
‘We are calling on all trade unionists to come to our support.’
Mrs Sukhwinder Mundy added: ‘We need our hardship pay every two weeks, the union leaders think that they have got rid of us and we never see them down here anymore but they’ve got another think coming.
‘We are fighting for union principles and are going to win.’
• Second news story
BELFAST POSTAL WORKERS STAY OUT
‘Our members resolve is still strong’, a Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) national spokesman told News Line yesterday, as postal workers from Tomb Street Delivery Office in Belfast and Mallusk Mail Centre, County Antrim, continued their unofficial strike over management ‘bullying’.
Talks were taking place in London yesterday in a bid to resolve the dispute that exploded into a walk-out by 200 postal workers at Tomb Street on January 31 and spread to Mallusk.
The CWU has officially repudiated the strike.
The spokesman added: ‘Eight hundred members are out.
‘The CWU is calling for an independent industrial relations review of how Royal mail is treating our members.
‘The strikers say bullying is rife and they want an employee relations review.
‘What we don’t want is management to say they will deal with relations with union reps and not deal with the treatment of members as a whole.
‘The strikers are waiting to see how the talks go today and will then decide what they do next.
‘All they want is to be treated with dignity and respect.’
CWU Belfast branch secretary Eoin Davey said: ‘The postal workers are determined to stay out until Royal Mail accepts what are reasonable terms for an employee.
‘There is nobody out there who doesn’t believe that what is being asked for by the postal workers is not acceptable.’
