Bitter lessons of Heathrow defeat

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"IT'S difficult make a backbone out wishbone"

With these words, TGWU National Organiser Ron Todd has tried to blame the collapse and defeat of the Heathrow baggage-handlers' strike upon union's 30,000 members.

His words will no doubt strike a chord among the frustrated ramp workers, who witnessed wholesale scabbing on their sevenweek struggle and the complete inaction of the bulk of their fellow TGWU members.

But the fact is that, like their fellow workers in British Leyland, the Heathrow workers are the victims first and foremost of the refusal of their official leaders to lead a serious fight in defence of their jobs and conditions. It is Todd who lacks the backbone to defy and fight for action against management threats of closure and bankruptcy.

The British Airways 'survival plan' was announced last September. It includes a 12-month pay freeze, the axing of 9000 jobs, the suspension of 16 routes, the closure of engineering bases in Cardiff and Manchester, the end of apprenticeship training, and a decision to sub-contract most catering operations.

Print In other words, the company's workforce is •to bear the brunt of resolving the cash crisis which left the firm claiming a £145 million deficit last year and predicting the same again.

Management have taken a tough line on imposing new work rotas, job gradings and longer hours, together with cuts in staff. For the ramp workers these mean an estimated 17 to 30 extra days' work per year without extra pay, and more weekend working.

Ramp workers refused to by Harry accept the new rotas - and on February 9 were locked out by management. Within three days their struggle was made official by the But there matters were left - for week after week.

In the face of stiff airport by-laws, even limited attempts by the ramp workers to picket were inhibited.

And despite immediate and wholesale scabbing on the strike by management, pilots and other airport staff, there was no attempt by TGWU officials to call out other sections of their membership to support the ramp workers.

Return

On the contrary, a week after the lock-out, a mass meeting had to vote down a recommendation by these officials to return to work for a 28 day period!

By February 22 a mass meeting of 1500 was being assured by the TGWU's so-called "coordinator' for West London, Jack Dromey, that "50,000 members in the area are behind you". But as with most of Dromey's 'mobilisations' the net effect of this was -zero! Indeed the only real show of solidarity had been two one-hour strikes by APEX women check-in staff at Terminal 1.

Two days later Ron Todd swaggered: "We are going to stop the scabbing at Heathrow". • But this meant not the convening of TGWU section meetings to explain ing strikes and blacking action, but simply 'strong representations' - to other By mid March there had been a one-day token strike by TGWU members in Terminal 3, and a similar decision by import/export workers. But still — after a month of official strike and organised scabbing there had been no call for sustained all out action.

Lambasted in the press, beset by blacklegs, isolated on the airport itself, and denied any real leadership from their officials, the ramp workers were already plainly headed towards defeat when Todd moved at the end of March for his final empty show of militancy.

A mass meeting was called, supposedly for all 30,000 TGWU members on the airport. Only an estimated 3,000 turned out, to vote in favour of a call for all-out strike action by the whole TGWU membership in support of the ramp workers.' Yet the bulk of those voting were strikers themselves. The action was plainly doomed even as the decision was taken.

Boot

But, to put the boot in on trade union organisation in the airport, police were called out the next day to arrest ten pickets who had successfully persuaded plane refuellers to turn back from a picket line inside the airport complex itself.

The following day a bitter meeting of 1,000 ramp workers voted 2-1 to return to work, accepting the new management rosters.

Todd even had the cheek to complain that the strikers should have 'hung on' for another top-level chinwag on the National Joint Council for Civil Air TransBP • air BP port!

But by then the ramp workers had recognised that the bureaucratised union leadership on the airport, corrupted by years of joint management/union collaboration in sectional 'panels' , was not prepared to lift a finger in the defence of their membership and shop floor organisation.

Todd - the man who presided over the sellout of the Ford pay claim -has done it again. His brand of loud-mouthed rhetorical militancy, combined with top-level manveuvring and a refusal to mobilise the rank and file in defence of their interests, has cost workers dear.

As they take stock of their defeat, Heathrow workers - like so many others - face the task in the next period of constructing a new leadership, politically capable of leading the necessary fight against the employers.

Baggage handlers must raise the demand that all TGWU representatives are withdrawn from the joint committees with management, and that negotiations are conducted by elected representatives directly answerable to the shop floor.

Only a reinvigorated independent shop stewards movement can defend Heathrow jobs and conditions against the onslaught to come as management prepare to hive it off to private ownership.

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the case and its implica- tions and mobilise support-