SOCIALIST UNITY

by Noah Tucker - 21st Century Socialism   

The law, the media, and the ‘irresistible’ forces of the market are ranged against them. But the British Airways cabin crew workers refuse to be pushed into the race to the bottom.

Eleven thousand workers voted to go on strike, in order to prevent their employer imposing changes which will result in massive reductions in pay and conditions, following which a judge has banned the strike; and the only unusual thing about this episode in today’s conditions is that the workers were so determined to take action, in the form of withdrawing their labour.

The two other main facts- that a company is embarked on a programme of substantially cutting the salaries, and worsening the working conditions, of its workforce; and that the High Court can rule that those workers do not have the right to strike- are quite normal and commonplace matters. The infringement of liberty evinced, of course, no dismay in the corporate press and television. Instead, carefully posing as the mouthpiece of the customers (rather than the management) of British Airways, the UK mass media expressed its holy outrage that a trade union had organised industrial action during the festival period; and in her ruling banning the strike, The Honorable Mrs Justice Laura Cox of the High Court was unable to resist making a punning reference to our most consumerist of Xmas carols, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, thus admonishing the trade union for its temerity and also reassuring the public that seasonal jollity has been restored:

“A strike of this kind over the twelve days of Christmas is fundamentally more damaging to BA and the wider public than a strike taking place at almost any other time of the year.”

Device for blackmail

The UK’s anti-strike and anti-trade union legislation is cleverly crafted, from both a political and technical point of view. The laws, which were enacted by the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and have not been rescinded under New Labour, do not directly make it a crime against the state for employees to organise and act to improve or protect their pay and conditions. Instead, they create a legal minefield, making it an extremely difficult and complex undertaking for a group of workers to take a collective decision not to go to work without thereby exposing their trade union to a  challenge by the employer in the civil courts, through which the entire union can be destroyed as an organisation by having its funds and other assets sequestrated.

Because most trade unions represent a range of people working for various different employers, the law therefore operates as a device for blackmail by the prospect of collective punishment; threatening to destroy the means of protection for a great number of workers, even if only a relatively small section of them are in dispute with their particular employer.

That was the fate which would have befallen Britain’s largest trade union Unite, which numbers 1.5 million workers in its UK membership, had it not immediately cancelled the strike by about 12,000 of its members on the orders of Justice Cox.

In its application to the High Court to force its cabin crew employees to attend for work despite their overwhelming decision to refrain from work for a period, British Airways management relied on one of the host of potential legal technicalities which are afforded to employers by the legislation. In this case, among the trade union’s 12,500 BA cabin crew members as of November 2009, a small minority of that number were about to leave the company’s employment. Under two aspects of the company’s programme- to reduce the overall workforce (thus increasing the workload on the remaining staff), and to replace its existing workforce with fresh employees on much lower pay and conditions, BA had invited staff to apply for voluntary redundancy, on terms which included a financial pay-off. Very understandably, some of the cabin crew workers decided to get out while the going was still quite good, and applied for the severance scheme.

When the strike ballot began on November 16th, the trade union did not possess a list of which of its members had taken up the redundancy offer, and it was not until two days after the voting papers were sent out that British Airways management sent the union a list of those whose applications for redundancy had been accepted.

So, as the company’s lawyer Bruce Carr QC informed the High Court on 16th December:

“811 people, who will have gone by the time of the strike, were included in the ballot and, as the union membership was in the region of 90 per cent, a reasonable assumption was that 700-odd of those were union members.”

Thus, going by the employer’s figures, around 6% of the total number of ballot papers went out to people who would not eventually be participants in the proposed strike. On that basis, The Honorable Mrs Cox (whose previous achievements as a human rights lawyer, before she was appointed as a High Court judge, were without question highly honourable) decided for the company against the workers. But the turnout in the strike ballot was 80%, and of those participating in the ballot 92.5% voted to strike. Given that nine out of ten of British Airways cabin crew workers are union members, there is no room for any doubt whatsoever that the ballot result expressed the decision of the vast majority of the BA cabin crew.

Having advanced her career by bravely defending human rights, Laura Cox, now presiding on behalf of the British establishment, stamped on the human rights of the British Airways cabin crew workers.

The joint general secretaries of the Unite trade union Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley commented succinctly:

“While we have never wanted this dispute it is a disgraceful day for democracy when a court can overrule such an overwhelming decision by employees taken in a secret ballot.”

Savouring the blood from this triumph against the right of workers to take strike action, employers will now be considering- especially in the event that a neo-Thatcherite Conservative government comes to power in May or June 2010- how to erect further legal barriers against the ability of their employees to resist reductions in their pay, pensions and other benefits.

Race to the bottom

In the spirit of Margaret Thatcher’s slogan ‘There is no alternative’, a key element of the campaign against the BA cabin crew and their trade union is that, in the modern conditions, in which it faces competition from other airlines which can sell cheaper tickets because they pay substantially lower wages to their staff, British Airways has no choice but to impose much worse pay and conditions on its own staff. Therefore the BA workers must accept their fate as a result of the workings of that irresistible force- the ‘free’ market.

Lest this should be seen as a dismal prospect, it is pointed out that the BA flight workers’ current ‘comfortable’ situation is an obsolete hangover from the bad old days when UK-based air transport was a nationalised industry, and that abolishing their ‘comfortable’ situation represents a step into the bright and exciting present and future. In an interview on the BBC Newsnight programme on 17th December, the travel editor of the Independent newspaper, Simon Calder, answered a question on whether British Airways might not survive commercially:

“Oh no, BA will always survive. If you have got the largest number of slots at the world’s most desirable international airport [London Heathrow], and you have got a pretty strong brand despite this last few days of mayhem, then you’re always going to survive. It’s just a question of how many cabin crew you have who are on the old 1980s terms and conditions and how many you recruit on the new 21st Century terms.”

These new 21st Century terms were summarised by the BBC as follows:

“In November [2009], BA reduced the number of cabin crew on long haul flights from 15 to 14 and introduced a two-year pay freeze from 2010.

The Unite union said this would hit passenger service, as well as the earnings and career prospects of cabin crew.

The airline has also proposed new contracts for fresh recruits and newly-promoted staff. These include a single on-board management grade, no seniority, promotion on merit, and pay set at market rate plus 10%.

This would still see new recruits paid significantly less than current staff, however.

The plans for the changes were first presented to company workers and unanimously rejected at a mass meeting in July.

The union said those measures were brought in in November and argues it should have been consulted because the changes are contractual.

But BA disputes this and says it was not obliged to consult.”

Of course, as soon as a significant proportion of BA cabin crew are employed on the new ‘market rate plus 10%’ pay scale, thus undermining the bargaining power of those staff still on the existing ‘1980s terms and conditions’, the company will take action to isolate and confront those remaining workers on the ‘old terms’ in order to reduce their pay and conditions to the level of the newer workers.

And what is that ‘market rate’, which British Airways will use as the guideline for its new salary structure? The closest UK-based competitors of British Airways are Virgin and Bmi. Personnel today reported in June 2009 that:

“…data from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) revealed that while the average Virgin cabin crew salary was £14,400 per annum, BA paid its staff £29,900.”

For those interested in the working hours and roster arrangements of airline cabin crews, a glance at the recruitment page of the Bmi website is an educational experience:

“The length of your days will vary, depending on how many sectors you are rostered to complete. A sector is a one way flight. The number of sectors may vary and is dependent on the length of the flight. You may have to start as early as 5.00am (which could mean getting up as early as 3.00am). You may finish as late as 11.30pm. Some night stopping away from your base may be rostered.  Charter flights may require reporting for duty/finishing at any time of the day or night. In addition, your working day may be affected by delays or changes to your flights.

Cabin Crew are given a roster four to eight weeks in advance. Duty days will vary between early starts and late finishes, the number of sectors worked and may include standby duties at home or at the airport. The hours of work are governed by Civil Aviation Authority regulations. Time off will vary and you should expect to work weekends, Christmas and bank holidays as the airline operates 365 days of the year. Published rosters may change due to operational requirements.”

For adhering to these requirements, the company offers truly 21st Century ‘competitive’ pay rates:

“A competitive cabin crew starting salary [for staff based at Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast] which is presently £11,508.00 per annum. London Heathrow weighting is paid at a rate of £2,838.00 per annum.”

Is that the depth of the abyss into which the British Airways cabin crew are staring? Not necessarily. Given, as we are told, that a substantial element of an airline’s commercial competitiveness is determined by the lowness of the wages and benefits of its employees, one likely effect of a success by BA management in driving down the remuneration of its own cabin crew would be that Virgin, Bmi, other existing competitors- and also any new challengers in the ‘competitive’ rat race of the arline sector- would seek to make further reductions in the already abysmal ‘market rate’ pay and conditions of the workforce; and so on, in a deepening spiral.

By an overwhelming majority, British Airways cabin crews have declined the invitation to enter that race to the bottom. Though their morale has inevitably been somewhat dented by the edict of the High Court, and by the hysterical frenzy of the media campaign against them, they will ballot again; and this time, their trade union may find a way through the minefield of anti-strike legislation.

As a trade union activist once remarked, as it became clear during the long-gone 1970s that the ‘bad old days’ of improving rates of pay, job security, and almost full employment were under threat- though at that time the ferocity of that threat could barely be imagined:

“The rat-race is for rats. We are not rats. We are human beings!”