BAA August Bank Holiday Airport Strikes Averted
Planned airport strikes across six UK airports, including Heathrow, over the bank holiday weekend have been called off thanks to a new agreement over pay.
Union Unite was able to recommend a better pay offer for the 6,000 affected staff, which included firefighters and security workers.
The union had earlier rejected BAA’s 1 per cent pay offer which led to the potential strikes, and would have meant that thousands of passengers’ travel plans would have been disrupted over one of the busiest weekends of the year for the industry. Workers were also initially offered an extra 0.5 per cent increase as long as changes to BAA’s sickness policy were agreed to.
National secretary of Unite Brendan Gold told Guardian.co.uk: "We've reached a settlement which we are prepared to recommend to our members. We will be undertaking a ballot of our members, and that will commence over the next couple of days, and last for probably about three weeks."
Mr Gold added that he was confident that the recommended settlement would be sufficient to prevent union members from going ahead with the proposed strikes. He went on to say that Unite had worked tirelessly to reach a suitable agreement.
Full details of the package are expected to be released later today (Tuesday). Strikes would also have affected Stansted, Southampton, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen airports should they have gone ahead.
Terry Morgan of BAA, owned by Spanish firm Ferrovial, said: "We believe that the unions are going to recommend acceptance of our offer to their membership, and if that’s the case, then we are very, very confident that any disruption to our airport operations has now been avoided."
Travel Industry news posted by Romany on 17 August 2010
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