UK Airport Worker Strike to Shut Down Most British Airports
The last Monday of August is a Bank Holiday in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and roughly a million Brits accordingly use the extended weekend to vacation out of the country. If the BAA employees at London-Heathrow, London-Stansted, Glasgow, Southampton, Edinburgh and Aberdeen make good on their threat to walk out, the loss of firefighters and security staff would force the airports to close, functionally stranding anyone who wants to get in or out of Britain (with the exception of London-Gatwick, London-City airports).
When British Airways employees tried this stunt last year they got slapped down by a judge, because timing your strike to wreck the UK economy violates British fair play or something. Nice to see that the Unite union, which represents both the BA employees and the airport employees who are threatening to strike at the end of the month, is willing to trot out the same routine again. To their friends and family it probably demonstrates admirable spunk. To the rest of the UK, to anyone who needs to fly through the UK, and to anyone at any airport anywhere in the world that will be affected by UK cancellations, it's just obnoxious.
Following the BA strikes and the UK's uniquely stupid overreaction to the Big Ash disaster, a full scale airport shutdown would also come dangerously close to making Britain travel just too much hassle for the average tourist. Jaunted's affection for London knows virtually no bounds, but there are other countries where the workers at major airlines and airports reliably, you know, work.
Unite officials will meet next week to set a strike date, at which point the clock starts ticking on the week-long cooling off period, at which point the strike can begin. The issue at hand is pay and bonuses and blah blah blah. Unite has now succeeded in getting two successive British Prime Ministers, each representing an opposite end of the political spectrum, to call them out for recklessly playing games with the nation's economy. They're not entirely wrong.
[Photo: Jim Linwood]
Related Stories:
· A million passengers face holiday misery as six major airports are paralysed by strikes [Daily Mail]
· Airline Strikes [Jaunted]
· Airlines [Jaunted]
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