A WORD of advice if you’re heading off on holiday and find yourself queuing for hours or searching for lost luggage.
Don’t take your frustration out on the frontline staff, because they’re probably as worn down by it as you are.
6
The chaos we’re seeing at airports is an epic fail by the highly paid management hiding away in air-conned, plush carpeted offices elsewhere, plain and simple.
And the reason is that, while their pay and bonuses still fund a lavish lifestyle, those whose input is critical to the smooth running of the travel industry have been treated very shabbily indeed by many, not all, of their paymasters.
In an unprecedented move at the height of the summer rush, British Airways has announced it’s suspending sales of tickets from Heathrow to Europe for one week.
Why? The airline says it’s being forced to do so by the boss of Heathrow, whereas he says it’s airlines’ “behaviour towards ground handling” that’s caused the chaos of long queues and baggage mountains.
In other words, staff shortages.
It takes a chain of around 30 to 40 people to get a flight off on time — including check-in staff, border officers, baggage handlers, cleaners and cabin crew — and if just one of these components fails, the domino effect results in delays and cancellations.
Having spent the past few weeks investigating what’s behind the airport chaos for Channel 4’s Dispatches, it is clear that many of the human cogs who put those wheels in motion are feeling exhausted, underappreciated and underpaid.
Or, as Rory Boland, travel editor of Which? puts it: “The reason we have such significant disruption is because some airlines sacked lots of staff.
“And what I would say beyond that is they didn’t just sack them, but the manner in which they’re trying to get them back is very poor.
“The pay is poor, the working conditions are really difficult.”
Baggage handlers are often working shifts alone, some starting at 3am, for just £9.67 an hour.
Our undercover reporter working as a handler at Manchester Airport managed two weeks and was exhausted.
He said: “It was absolutely brutal and no one gives them much credit.”
Swissport, which handles baggage for several airlines, cut around half of its 6,000 staff during the pandemic and, given those terms and conditions, it’s perhaps little wonder they are struggling to get new workers — though it says it has now hired 4,100 staff since January.
Olivia Kerr worked as a flight attendant for BA for 22 years and “adored” the job.
She tells how during the pandemic she was told to take a 40 per cent pay cut, or be fired.
She says: “We were told we were being fired and rehired. That was the deal.
“You were going to come in on £17,000 and all your terms and conditions were going to change . . . we had no idea what it meant, except it was a massive cut in terms of finance, a massive change in working life.
“They just treated us with total contempt . . . treating us as though we are a disposable commodity that is only worth [little] on an accountants page.”
She adds that when she refused the new contract, she was made redundant.
“She has since left the industry but, along with 49 others, is taking BA to an employment tribunal.
BA wouldn’t comment on Olivia’s case but told us that it restructured to survive and that, despite £4billion of losses, most redundancies were voluntary.
Yet some airlines managed to keep staff on during the pandemic and, consequently, are functioning relatively well when they’re not let down by ground handling issues.
It’s the same story in the train industry too.
Yes, the strikes are frustrating for the rest of us trying to get to work but it’s not just about money. It’s also about the erosion of workers’ rights and conditions.
EXHAUSTED AND UNDERPAID
Staff on Avanti West Coast train told a friend of mine that they felt the company didn’t give a damn about them and was only interested in profits.
Just like so many airport and airline workers, they felt undervalued, badly treated and disposable.
And who wants to get out of bed every morning for a job like that?
Little wonder that many have taken better paid jobs elsewhere with more sociable hours.
No-one is disputing the pandemic was a tough time for the travel industry as a whole, but it’s hard not to conclude that some big hitters saw it as a good chance to fire experienced staff with traditional workers’ rights in the hope of rehiring them for less on lousy terms.
The Great Reset is supposed to be about reshaping the post-pandemic future in a “healthier, more equitable and more prosperous” way, according to the World Economic Forum.
Hmmm. Nice thought, but there appears to be another “great reset” going on and the Government is either incompetently unaware of it, or turning a blind eye.
Either way, it’s a big mistake.
The robots are coming and they won’t need paying, will never moan or be sick, and will work all the hours God sent to help swell the profits of the various industries that, having used the pandemic to wilfully erode the rights of its human workers, will then happily dump them.
And the result — a.k.a. a false economy — will be hundreds of thousands needing a taxpayer-funded Universal Basic Income to survive.
- Airport Chaos Undercover: Dispatches can be found on catch up in All 4.
WILL THE LOVERS SURVIVE?
AFTER a shaky start, this year’s Love Island was a corker – with deserved winners, for entertainment value alone, Ekin-Su Culculoglu and Davide Sanclimenti.
6
But when it comes to the runners and riders in the “Will it last?” stakes, here are my predictions:
- Tasha and Andrew will get married.
- Ekin-Su and Davide will last a year or two but eventually split.
- Dami and Indiyah won’t last because he’ll muck it up.
- Gemma will dump Luca as soon as she realises the nation didn’t love him quite as much as she thinks she does but doesn’t really.
Mystic Moore? Or Missed it Moore? Time will tell.
Grass isn’t greener
ONE in ten UK homeowners have now ditched their lawns for fake grass (#metoo).
But while it may be green in colour, environmentally it’s a bit of a no-no because it doesn’t provide food for living creatures, and producing the plastic for it emits carbon and uses fossil fuels.
But now a hosepipe ban is imminent, can we perhaps claw back some credibility by pointing out that we never have
6
BEY HAS TO HAVE A WORD
BEYONCE probably has 387 advisers in her extensive and eye-wateringly expensive entourage.
6
So why one of them didn’t point out to her that it wasn’t wise to include the word “sp*z” – short for spastic – in a song is beyond me.
Especially as fellow singer Lizzo has recently done the same and had to change it. Duh.
Off this time
I’M now off for two weeks on a holiday I first booked in late 2019 and have already rearranged five times.
See you back here on August 24.
Or next week if my flight gets cancelled again.
LAUREN IS PROOF MEN CAN MULTI-TASK
ACCORDING to one report, “all eyes were on Lauren Sanchez” as she and her Amazon founder boyfriend Jeff Bezos dined in London this week.
6
I’ll bet they were.
Particularly, one suspects, the male diners.
Finally, proof that men can pay attention to two things at once.
LIONESS IS MORE, COACH
LEGENDARY coach Anson Dorrance, now 71, coached several of the England Lionesses, including manager Sarina Wiegman.
6
He says: “When I started coaching, I was really upset with this bizarre dichotomy that when a young boy has a competitive fire, he’s put on a pedestal – but when a woman is competitive, all of a sudden she’s excoriated, called the B-word like there’s something wrong with her.”
Quite.
So let’s hope that the competitive fire of our Euro champions has finally put paid to such nonsense.
For all the latest Covid-19 News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
