The Return of the Strike

The Return of the Strike

Posted: by Nick Garbutt  |  21 May, 2010  |  0 comments

When I was a cub reporter the most prestigious job you could get on a decent sized paper was industrial correspondent.

 

Those were the days of secondary picketing, wild cat strikes and mass demonstrations stewarded by police in riot gear.

 

Today the most sought after job on a national tabloid is showbiz correspondent where you get paid lots of money for writing lick spittle nonsense about people who use lots of hair products.

 

It would seem that in these early days of the new coalition, with spending cuts looming, the industrial correspondent is about to have his or her day in the sun again.

 

They’ve certainly had an interesting week following the British Airways dispute, the first major clash of the new political era.

 

There are a number of significant features of this dispute. Back in the 80s many trades unionists talked in terms of class war – and the National Union of Miners and the print unions SOGAT and the NGA genuinely saw themselves as stormtroopers of the Working Class who wanted lasting political change as well as more pay and better conditions.

 

It is really hard to see British Airways trolley dollies in quite the same context. Pouring vintage claret in the hush of the first class cabin is not quite the same as hacking out coal with a pick three quarters of a mile underground.

 

So the future will be mainly about white collar disputes, if only because our entire manufacturing base is pretty much destroyed.

 

And white collar workers rarely get public sympathy – BA’s cabin crew have been so successfully demonised by management and the tabloids that these most harmless of people will ask for their voices to be disguised before being interviewed as if they were convicted paedophiles.

 

As public opinion is so crucial to the outcome of any major dispute management has the upper hand.

 

In the old days management often used to lock the workers out to stamp out working to rule and to bring disputes to a head.

 

British Airways have discovered a new, more powerful weapon – the courts. They have expensive lawyers who search for potential flaws in processes followed by the unions and go to court to try to make strike action unlawful – and mindful of the potential financial consequences the unions will comply. In the old days this was rarely the case.

 

This is yet another powerful weapon which can be used to disrupt industrial action and break the unions’ will.

 

In this new era all the power is with management. And yet there is one important matter that Willie Walsh and his team appear to have forgotten.

 

Any business is only as good as the people it employs – and in the case of British Airways the staff who have most inter-action with the public are the cabin crew, a group of people they have spent the last year or so demonising.

 

Labour relations within BA are poisonous and it is a matter of conjecture as to whether they can ever be properly repaired. Disaffected staff with poor morale have a direct negative impact on a business’s bottom line.

 

For Walsh victory is in sight – all he is trying to do now is to punish strikers by permanently removing their travel perks. This act of punishment and humiliation may ultimately cost him and his business just as much as the staff.

 

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