Some 1,400 security guards will go on a ten-day strike over the Easter holidays at London’s Heathrow airport, the UK’s main hub, after pay negotiations between management and the Unite union failed. The strike begins on Friday, “having stumbled into last-minute negotiations” over “Heathrow’s refusal to improve its wage offer substantially,” Unite said in a press release dated Thursday night.
The union denounces in comparison “the remuneration of the director general John Holland-Kaye” that increased “between 2020 and 2021 from 800,000 pounds to 1.5 million pounds”, while the real salary of a security guard “that makes endless guards is £30,000” per year, or “a 24% decline in real terms from 2017.”
They propose a 10% increase in wages and a bonus of 1,150 pounds
Heathrow, for its part, said in a statement on Friday that the airport was “operating as normal”, with “an additional 1,000 staff and a full management team present in the terminals to assist passengers” over the busy Easter period. “We know that the majority of our employees do not support the strike,” the airport statement said, arguing that Unite “again rejected an improved offer despite approval by the PCS union.”
The airport says its proposal would see employees receive a pay rise of more than 10%, retroactive to January 1, plus a one-time bonus of £1,150. Heathrow remembers raising wages by 4% last year and then also paying a £2,000 bonus.
Several hundred flights canceled by British Airways
British Airways, of which Heathrow is the base, canceled several hundred flights before the strike. A total of 32 flights departing or arriving at the main London hub each day, or 5% of the trips made by the company at Heathrow, will be canceled during the Easter holidays. The measure will not affect long-haul flights. The airport had already suffered, in the spring of last year and then during the summer holidays, strikes and staff shortages that resulted in endless queues, delays, problems with baggage handling and flight cancellations. As the industry struggled to absorb the recovery in demand, Heathrow also had to limit the number of passengers passing through its facilities each day.
The United Kingdom has been shaken for months by repeated strikes in many sectors for better wages due to price increases of more than 10%. More than 560 workers at a warehouse of the American giant Amazon in Coventry, in the center of the country, have thus decided to continue their movement to demand better wages with six new days of strike next month, from April 16 to 18, after the 21 to 23.
Source: BFM TV
