Don't let BA cabin crew fight alone

As New Labour ministers lined up with the right-wing press over the weekend to condemn the strike by British Airways cabin crew, you had to ask yourself what had the national leaders of the Unite trade union done to prepare for a confrontation that the company had clearly planned for some time. The answer is not very much.

While BA management implemented a systematic policy of bullying and harassment – suspending or disciplining 38 crew members, nearly half of them union reps – Unite joint leaders Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley were shocked by the turn of events. So much so that at a recent Unite national committee, they apparently turned on Len McCluskey, the assistant general secretary who was then in charge of the dispute.

Under marching orders from Gordon Brown to get the dispute settled, Woodley took over the talks and tried to broker a deal based on offering up more than £60 million in “savings” at the expense of the workforce. Finally, the penny dropped. Woodley announced that BA chief executive Willie Walsh was leading a war against Unite with the intention of undermining the union within the airlne.

Writing to striking cabin crew – who have defied vilification and slander to sustain their three-day strike against job and pay cuts – Woodley said: “I pledge that your union Unite is putting all its resources and strength into supporting your dispute and securing a decent agreement.”

If that were truly the case, then the cabin crew would not be left to fight alone. For it is clear that the strike-breaking operation mounted by BA can only be countered by solidarity action by other Unite members working for the airline. The future of the whole union is at stake and that is what the membership needs to be told.

That would require the union to defy the anti-union laws that ban solidarity action, legislation that was introduced by the Tories in the 1980s and retained by the present government. Cabin crew should demand that Unite’s leaders stop pussy-footing around and get serious if the union is to have a future.

It will be an uphill battle. Unite has given £11 million to keep New Labour afloat and is diverting huge resources in a bid to get Brown back into Downing Street. This is the same Brown whose foreign secretary David Miliband said yesterday: "We deplore the strike...the way to resolve these disputes is through negotiation. It's damaging for the company, it's damaging obviously for the crews and it's damaging for the country." From a strictly business point of view, you could say that Unite’s return on investment in New Labour is well below the bottom line.

BA’s problems are just one indication of the way the economic and financial system is taking its toll. The market for all sorts of goods and services, including flights, has plummeted in the recession. Capitalism has but one answer – cut wages, shed jobs and destroy capacity. And what does this do? It deepens the crisis and makes a full-blown recession a certainty. That’s how mad and bad this system is.

The assault on BA cabin crew is part of a general offensive by the employers – public as well as private – to destroy hard-won conditions like pensions and decent wages. Network Rail is doing the same to signal workers and the universities are planning large-scale sackings. And this is before the savage cuts in public spending that will follow the general election, whoever comes out on top.

Resistance to paying for the crisis is clearly building up. We urgently need a strategy that turns defensive action into an offensive that highlights the capitalist economic and political system itself as the problem. A good first step would be to “hang on to your vote” at the election and take part in building People’s Assemblies throughout the country.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

New Labour lines up with BA

There’s nothing like a looming national strike to bring out the true class credentials of the political parties, together with the baying hound-dogs of the media. The democratically-agreed industrial action by 12,000 BA’s cabin crew workers in defence of their jobs, pay and conditions is certainly having this effect.

Leaders of all the major parties are only too anxious to condemn BA workers. Leading the pack are New Labour’s Lord Mandelson and transport secretary Lord Adonis (NB: There are no elections to the Lords). Adonis said yesterday: “I absolutely deplore the strike… it’s totally unjustified.” Today Gordon Brown declared: “It's not in the company's interest, it's not in the workers' interest and it's certainly not in the national interest."

Never mind the fact that cabin crew staff have now voted twice for strike action with overwhelming majorities. In the latest ballot nearly 79% of the membership voted 80.7% for action. New Labour, you will recall, was elected with the support of 25% of all registered voters at the last election. As for turnout, the BA ballot is far higher than anything you can expect in the upcoming general election.

And the notion peddled by the Tories that New Labour is “soft on the unions” is complete and utter hokum – and they know it. It is a fact that Britain’s biggest trade union, Unite, has paid a total of £11 million into the Blair and Brown’s coffers since 2007. It is the biggest single donor to New Labour. Without this support, New Labour would be unable to survive. The £11 million has brought Unite nothing in return.

Rather than making New Labour more pliable towards the interests of trade union members, the opposite is true. The rights of trade unions are perhaps even more restrictive than they were under the Tories. Secondary strikes and effective picketing remain illegal because this government retained all the anti-union laws introduced by Thatcher. Union leaders, with a few honourable exceptions, have fallen over backwards to comply with New Labour and its capitalist policies such as bailing out the banks.

Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, who is paid £735,000 a year, is determined to sack up to 2,000 staff and undermine the union Unite. The company has been running courses for strike breakers ever since the union’s first ballot showed a huge majority in favour of strike action. Walsh plans to use a 1,000-strong force of strike breakers to keep a skeleton service running and to defeat the strike.

Instead of getting ready to mobilise its membership at Heathrow and other airports against this threat, Unite leaders Len McCluskey and Tony Woodley have expressed shock at Adonis’ outright support for BA management. But this is a false naiveté. The real danger for BA cabin crew is that Unite leaders and the Trades Union Congress will quickly buckle under pressure and impose some rotten deal on their members. In any case, McCluskey and company certainly have no intention of defying the anti-union laws, which would be necessary to defeat BA’s strike-breaking actions with solidarity strikes.

British Airways, like the economy as a whole, in a major crisis. Walsh knows what is at stake. He needs to enfeeble the trade unions to save the airline for shareholder returns. Pretending that New Labour will broker a favourable compromise deal because it faces an election is living in a dangerous cloud cuckoo land. Precisely because of the election, Brown, Adonis and Mandelson will take the hard line. The future of a private corporation like BA is more important to them than the jobs and pay of the workforce.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary