British Airways avoided a crippling summer strike after agreeing a “significantly improved” pay deal in what unions say is a boost for the airline, which has been forced to cancel thousands of flights this year.
The Unite union on Thursday said a dispute involving check-in staff at London Heathrow Airport was “on hold” after the company made a new pay offer. Instead, employees will be voted on the sweetened pay deal.
“We welcome that BA has finally listened to the voice of its check-in staff. Unite has repeatedly warned that pay disputes at BA are imminent unless the company takes the legitimate grievances of our members seriously,” said Unite general secretary Sharon Graham.
The GMB union, whose members were also due to strike, has reached an agreement with BA, according to a union representative.
Around 700 BA check-in crew at Heathrow voted to strike last month, with unions promising “serious disruption” timed to coincide with the summer influx of overseas flying.
Unite said the pay offer from BA had been “significantly improved”, without disclosing further details. The union demanded pay be restored to pre-pandemic levels, following a 10 per cent cut imposed by BA when the industry was almost shut down due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.
The airline said it was “very pleased” with the result, which came a day after it announced plans to cut a further 10,300 flights this summer due to staff shortages, bringing the total number of canceled flights this year to around 30,000.
BA was under extreme pressure to avoid a strike that could throw its operations into chaos on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year as schools break for the summer.
But many other employers also acknowledge they will have to make pay concessions to avoid bitter labor disputes, especially in a tight labor market where recruiting is difficult.
Unite said separately on Thursday that it had won an additional 4 per cent pay rise for more than 17,000 of NatWest banka’s lowest-paid staff, which would be consolidated into basic pay rather than a one-off lump sum.
It recently struck a deal for a similar pay top-up at Barclays and a £1,000 bonus for Lloyds Banking Group staff.
Meanwhile, a Bank of England survey published on Thursday showed that two-thirds of employers believe it is “much more difficult” than normal to recruit new staff, with average wage growth expected to remain above 5 per cent over the next 12 months – the level of politicians I think is unsustainable.
Separately, research published on Friday by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, the UK’s professional body for recruitment firms, showed that employers are still reporting a deterioration in candidate availability and a sharp rise in starting salaries, despite the frenetic pace of hiring has slowed down a bit.
Although private sector employers are showing flexibility, the current political turmoil may make public and quasi-public sector pay disputes more difficult.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of rail union RMT, said Boris Johnson’s resignation raised the prospect of “months of chaos at the heart of government which could seriously undermine the prospect of a settlement of the national rail dispute”.
On Thursday, 2,000 RMT members at Govia Thameslink Railway voted to join industry-wide strikes, making the rail operator the 14th to face strike action in a dispute over pay, conditions and job security.
Nadhim Zahawi, the new chancellor, has not signaled strongly whether he might be willing to fund more generous pay deals for public sector workers than the 2-3 percent proposal currently included in departmental funding plans.
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