The following article was written by Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader, Vince Cable, and appears in this week’s Mail on Sunday:
Red Robbo. Jack Dash. Mick McGahey. Remember them? The almost forgotten union militants who once ruled the roost in Britain’s strike-prone industries and helped to wreck them. Perhaps the tradition is not dead after all – with BA the new battleground.
The 21st Century was supposed to be different: modern-minded, pragmatic unions; employers skilled in human relations management; governments which kept out of the way.
There have been strikes – on London Underground and the railways; at the Royal Mail; among refuse collectors – but they have mostly been resolved without too much damage done.
Indeed, today’s union leaders are for the most part people with a good understanding of the needs of their industries and constructive in their approach to industrial disputes.
At BA something has gone horribly wrong. We are back to old-fashioned industrial conflict of a kind that we thought, and hoped, had gone
Yet at BA something has gone horribly wrong. We are back to old-fashioned industrial conflict of a kind that we thought, and hoped, had gone.
British politics has also quickly reverted to the rhetoric of a bygone era. Prime Minister’s Questions this week seemed to be taking place in a time warp: Harold Gordon Wilson versus Edward David Heath.
The party of organised labour versus the party of the bosses. Union barons versus the Baron of Belize (as Lord Ashcroft is known).
The unresolved scandal of party funding lies behind this outburst of class warfare. The Labour Party depends to a worrying degree on Unite, the cabin crew union, for its funding – £11million over the past two years – and the Conservatives on very wealthy individuals, including Lord Ashcroft, who alone has donated more than £5million.
All parties have been damaged by association with questionable donors and the system smells to high heaven.
Party funding is deeply corrupting of democracy since it involves, essentially, the buying of seats in Parliament and political influence.
It is a bigger scandal than MPs’ expenses and, yet, vested interests have prevented any move towards serious reform. That failure is now aggravating what was already a poisonous industrial dispute.
As with all such wrangles there is merit on both sides. The management case is that they are trying to survive in a highly competitive industry and the pay of their staff – a key element of their costs – is well above that of competitors such as Virgin and easyJet.
Willie Walsh was brought in four years ago to sort out a company that had become complacent, was losing money and had built up a big pension fund deficit. I recall flying BA ‘cattle class’ in those days – the food was terrible and staff seemed to have been trained in the Stasi school of customer relations.
I stopped using BA unless it was unavoidable. I sense that it is now improved from a customer point of view. The management argument is that unless they build on this and cut costs they won’t survive.
The workforce have an argument too. They do not enjoy massive salaries. They are highly paid only by comparison with their competitors.
Cabin crew who have been to see me to explain their case were on £20,000 a year, below national average earnings. The company has already cut a lot of old perks. The workers complain of constant bullying.
And the union can reasonably claim that this is not a strike by unrepresentative militants; there has been 80 per cent backing in a ballot, twice.
So does it matter if BA flights are grounded by a strike?
It is deeply embarrassing to Gordon Brown a few weeks before an Election for his friends to be seen to cause serious disruption. And, of course, it is inconvenient to those with booked tickets. But we are not talking about an essential public service. There are plenty of other airlines.
While unions and management slug it out, they both seem to be forgetting that BA exists only because of considerable privileges which are a hangover from its days as a nationalised company.
BA has preferential take-off and landing slots at Heathrow which it receives free of charge, much to the fury of competitors such as Virgin and BMI.
The expansion of runway capacity at Heathrow – bitterly opposed by large numbers of Londoners who live under the flight paths – is being undertaken at the behest of BA as well as the airport’s owner BAA.
It is time to stop this pampering. If Gordon Brown and Lord Adonis seriously want to stop this strike they could make it crystal clear to both sides that these privileges will be taken away, leaving the airline and its jobs at the mercy of competitors. They would settle soon enough.
So why doesn’t the government act decisively? The answer takes us back to party funding. What we are dealing with here is not a return to Seventies industrial strife.
The strike is a by-product of our thoroughly corrupt system of party funding and the power it has put into the hands of vested interests, be they unions or billionaire off-shore tax dodgers.
If his premiership is not to end in total ignominy, Mr Brown has only a few weeks left to sort out this problem.
Vince Cable is the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman
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