Gate Gourmet

1
Gate Gourmet conflict in the employment
relationship
2
Gate Gourmet - why the employment
relationship matters

• August 10 Gate Gourmet sack 670 workers in
  dispute over working practices and pay
• Company recruits temporary workers on lower pay
  and conditions from Eastern Europe
• BA baggage handlers strike in sympathy
• BA forced to ground more than 100 short and long
  haul flights

3
The issues for Gate Gourmet

• BA outsources catering in 1997
• Gate Gourmet main supplier of airline meals to BA
  
• BA cost pressures passed on to Gate Gourmet
• Gate Gourmet imposes work and pay changes
• Workers take unofficial action are sacked
• Sympathy action by baggage handlers disrupts BA
• Gate Gourmet tries to get new contract from BA
• BA wants settlement of dispute prior to new
  contract
• Gate Gourmet insists on excluding trouble
  makers
• Gate Gourmet goes to court

4
The issues for the TGWU

• Members suffered decline in pay and conditions
  when work outsourced from BA
• Sees Gate Gourmet as anti-union American Multi
  National Corporation
• Action by workers not protected by law union
  funds at risk
• Strikers can be legally sacked
• BA strike had to be disowned
• But all see themselves as part of BA family
• Insists on reinstatement of all sacked workers
• Courts intervene on pickets
• Wants to involve BA in dispute resolution

5
How is labour managed?

• Power and authority
• The legal basis of management authority
• Management ideologies
• How is work controlled?
• Process control, supervision, discipline
• Commitment motivation
• How is work rewarded
• Payment systems and structures

6
Work politics

• Employment law
• Collective worker rights
• Individual worker rights
• BUT mostly employer rights
• The state bargaining
• Promoting collective bargaining?
• Controlling union action
• Free markets or social inclusion?
• How legitimate are workers interests when they
  clash with the demands of the market?

7
Perspectives on industrial relations

• Three main schools of thought on how the
  employment relationship may be understood
• Unitarism
• Pluralism
• Marxism

8
The unitary enterprise

• Industrial organisation is a partnership
• Rejects the idea of two sides in industry all
  stand to gain from corporate success
• Leadership is the key to success, this means
• The maintenance of strict discipline
• Conflict is caused by troublemakers
• Unions must be controlled or attacked

9
Pluralism

• The pluralist argument
• Industrial organisations are made up of sectional
  groups with divergent interests
• The degree of common purpose which can exist in
  industry is of a limited nature
• Unions do not introduce conflict. They provide an
  organised expression of conflict that would exist
  in any case
• Managers must learn to regain control by sharing
  it

10
Radical Marxist critiques

• Conflict is class based in wide social / economic
  context
• Both Unitarism Pluralism serve as managerial
  ideologies
• Causes of conflict
• Ownership of capital exploitation unequal
  balance of power control
• Relevant solutions
• Struggle industrial and political
• Slogan Socialism

11
The view from the employers

• The only protection people need in a tight
  labour market with skills shortages is to be so
  adaptable, trained and valuable that no employer
  would dare let them go or treat them badly
• The unions face stark choice. Either recognise
  the competitive demands of the 21st century,
  reform, - and, by encouraging flexibility -
  help the nation with the battle for
  competitiveness. Or wither on the vine of growing
  irrelevancy

Digby Jones Director General of the CBI
12
The view from the unions

• Digby Jones ought to come and join the real
  world, where we are all working harder for
  longer. Modern workers need union representation
  more than ever, and any worker in Britain can
  tell you they face a stack of workplace issues
• Without unions to stand up for people at work,
  Britain would be a much less fair society,
  pensions would be on their way out - except in
  the boardroom - and many more people would be
  injured or die at work every year

Tony Woodley General Secretary of the TGWU
13
Prospects issues

• Gate Gourmet may collapse
• Is outsourcing viable?
• How far can companies rely on attacking labour
  costs to promote productivity?
• How easy should it be to sack workers?
• Should legal protection be extended to sympathy
  action?