By New Worker correspondent

This week hundreds of striking Heathrow workers marched to the airport HQ in Hillingdon demanding that the airport’s management intervene in their pay dispute with contractor Wilson James.

The dispute involves 800 workers who assist the thousands of passengers with mobility problems who pass through the airport every day. At Gatwick, the other major London airport, Wilson James workers are paid 10 per cent more. The march and rally came after the latest two days of strike action in this long-running dispute. These will be repeated if the dispute is not resolved. Originally 500 workers were involved but another 300 have rallied to the cause.

The Wilson James workers postponed initial strike action in early April to ballot on a revised offer from their employer, which was rejected. Further industrial action will now be scheduled.

The company’s gross profits for the year until last July amounted to £35.4 million, with gross turnover up by 17.7 per cent from the previous year. At the same time Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) made nearly one billion pounds in pre-tax profits during 2024.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham was perfectly justified in pointing out: “Wilson
James can well afford to put forward an acceptable offer. Heathrow bosses need to tell the
company to do just that, otherwise these strikes will continue to intensify with Unite’s full
support.”

The union points out that the refusal to table a reasonable offer has already caused considerable disruption to thousands of disabled passengers, with tales of people missing flights and not being provided with wheelchairs and other assistance.

Also at Heathrow, in a case decided at Southwark Crown Court, British Airways has been fined £3.2 million for health and safety failings. The issue was that two baggage handlers had been
injured while using machinery for loading luggage into planes.

They were not fitted with adequate guardrails to stop workers from falling despite them working at height. In these cases, one suffered back injuries and cut his head after falling 1.5 metres in August 2022, while the following March another fell three metres down causing a brain bleed and long-term chronic pain and headaches.

Sharon Graham said: “Nobody should be seriously injured while at work and Unite welcomes the decision to convict British Airways for its failure to protect staff. British Airways must ensure that lessons have been learnt from these devastating incidents. Unite is committed to holding employers like BA to its legal obligations to always provide a safe working environment for airport workers through our army of health and safety reps.”

Regional officer Joe McGowan added that “working in airside ramp operations can be dangerous, which is why employers need to do more to protect workers from entirely avoidable hazards like falls from height”.

At Gatwick, Unite have postponed industrial action by Red Handling workers at the airport over late and missing pension payments. About 100 workers involved in baggage handling, check-in and flight dispatching were relieved to discover that their pension money had actually been paid by Red Handling to provider Royal London.

Several Red Handling workers have experienced late wage payments that have put them in financial difficulty, but a new pay offer includes a clause ensuring that in the event of any repetition Red Handling must give staff a bonus in compensation. The remaining day of strike action on 1st June is still due to go ahead pending the outcome of the ballot.