“It’s just a perfect storm of ‘no, we’re not having this any more,’” Nadine Houghton, the GMB’s chief negotiator in the recent British Airways dispute, tells me. In just a few months, there’s been a “transformation” in “people’s expectations of what they’re worth, looking at what their employer has put them through, and for what ends, and seeing their living standards eroded”.
“People have returned from the pandemic with perhaps a different perspective on work and life in general,” adds Houghton. Fed up of being told what to do, where to work, and even “how to dress”, on often insufficient pay, her members are saying: “Look, the railway workers are doing it, why can’t we?”
And it’s working. Houghton’s BA check-in staff this month won an 8% pay rise, plus bonuses and shift pay, despite the employer originally “offering nothing”. Workers across the airline, from baggage handlers to cabin crew, members of both GMB and Unite, also won 8% to 13% pay rises on the back of threatened strikes.
