Fire fighters, security guards and engineers working for BAA will start voting on what the union has called a “paltry” pay offer of 1%, following a pay freeze last year.
Less than half of the airport staff have voted and out of 3054 valid ballots 74.1% voted yes to a strike and 25.9% voted no.
The Unite representatives will meet on Monday to discuss what will happen next, they will have to give BAA a week’s notice in order to strike and it is suggested that the August Bank Holiday is the chosen strike date.
However, BAA claim that the vote did not give Unite a mandate strike as fewer than half of the staff that were eligible to vote did so.
If the strike goes ahead, airports will need to be closed as there will not be enough safety staff working to be able to keep flights going. It could mean as many as 300000 people and about 2500 flights will be hit by the strike.
The airports involved are Heathrow, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton.
What we say –
We know that this is all very frustrating and we fully understand you being concerned about the threatened BAA strikes.
Unfortunately, until the dates are released there is very little that we can actually do! We are of course keeping on top of the news and press releases, and once the dates are announced, if you are affected, we will take the necessary action and let you know what the options are. We will only know about each different scenario once the dates are confirmed and the various airlines confirm what their policies are – but it’s pretty standard that they will either offer full refunds or a date change free of charge. We would then contact our ground handler/the hotel to see what needs to be done in terms of re-arranging things on a case by case basis.
