Airport staff to be balloted for summer strike

The Unite union is causing trouble on several fronts and I doubt this will be the last. Let's hope the workforce are more realistic than the union leaders. In my company we set targets with varying thresholds for trigger of bonus payments etc. but if the lowest tier is not met, we pay nothing and 3% below is a miss!

Unite (financial supporters of Ed Balls) is unduly too large for a democracy and the power they have is far far too great. They seem hell bent on upsetting the travel plans of ordinary hardworking people and just want to cause trouble. We now need really significant curbing of their powers and I hope the new government wont skirt around tackling this issue. We have already seen in the BA strike the fact that the two goons who head it up live in luxury houses, take holidays in villas owned by other Union representatives, are given £44k land rovers and stay at the Waldorf instead of taking the train home. This is a joke and the longer they are allowed to get away with it the worse this misery will become.

Let them strike as it needs to get worse before it gets better. If these morons listen to the even bigger morons at Unite than they deserve all that they will get.-nothing. Willie Walsh will never back down and he cant really lose now as he has the ear of honest hardworking people in the UK. Smash this outdated bunch of hypocrites called Unite and all who sail in her for the sake of England!

So a temporary cessation of action against BA, now they are after BAA, at a time when most companies are cutting pay, or holding no increases. I say most, apparently Tesc0 are giving a 2% rise.

Now wait for the civil service strikes, and Unite leading the charge to save jobs that are nothing more than seat polishers to enable Unite to collect more dues from.

Now isn't Unite at the head of the charge for Banks to be broken up because they are too large?

What is sauce for the goose.............?

Come on Unite, we are all trying to pull together to get this country out of the hole created by Gordon and Tony et al. Can't you and your members just knuckle down and think creatively how to help? Pay freezes, no bonuses and reduced hours have been around for millions of hard working people for the last couple of years and it's about time union leaders and public sector workers realized it and helped rather than hindered our economic recovery

The unions are current day fascists.......they have no sympathy for anyone else but thier own members,and this selfisf greed when many others are taking pay cuts will in the end lead to thier downfall.

They are out of touch with economic reality and are quite happy to screw the general public with thier irresponsible actions.

But for thier bully boy leaders who lost thier socialist principals decades ago the thought of industrial action is the ulimate excitement.

They will perish eventually with thier gullible members .

Their Maxim, Unite uber alles!

What an amazing set of comments!

First, I do think unions need to modernise, but in principle they are a good thing. Just because you lot are suffering and you just go through life accepting whatever your employers throw at you, it doesn't mean it is wrong to stand up to companies that are not playing the game. These people took a pay freeze to help the company and now that the firm is doing better, the unions don't think what they are being offered is acceptable. It is still to go to a ballot. The members may not agree. But its their choice.

A couple of years back I worked for a company that had in previous years been unionised. With the agreement of the workers, the unions were eradicated. One day the firm said "we're not going to pay any overtime anymore". We had no union, no come back. It was a choice of accept it or leave. If it had been done to an individual it would have been called constructive dismissal, but to the whole workforce it was just economics. I'm lucky I have transferrable skills and I live in an area with many jobs so I left. I doubt these people do.

There are profit making financial institutions in the city and probably many other firms that have taken the chance to cut pay, because they can, citing the credit crunch as the reason. People have had no choice because until recently there have been no jobs and because there are no unions, they have no comeback. I had a 7% paycut last year in a bank still making profit, what could I do about it? Nothing.

I say, if you believe in your cause then fight for it, but just don't be bullied by the union leaders. And the rest of us should bring the unions back.

Unions are not the answer as they often abuse their position as much as any employer. Unions cost money like any other organisation and many of the top Union leaders have very heft pay packets which rather goes against their cause.

If the money paid to Unions was destributed back to their members and employees were given better representation at the top of companies then maybe industrial relations between employer and employee would improve.

Either way Unions are not utopia for employees though some are better than others but Unite does seem to have it's own agenda outside of those it claims to represent as it is far too political and we all know that politics rarely solves many problems and often makes them far worse.

Unite is fighting here for the supremacy of Unite because if it wins it gets more control over others and also increases it's income.

I must be missing something. How do you give anyone a pay rise when you are below the line. The whole country moaned about the bank bonuses which the tax payer had to bail out - 'remember'. And now the solution - before they strike, ask the two-headed goons at the top of Unite to take large pay drops to show sympathy with their equally foolish rank and file members.

Have to agree with Nobby Brown!

My wife has had her hours cut in half meaning I have to work 2 jobs just to pay the mortgage and bills, we had saved enough for short break in Majorca its the Summer holidays. I just hope that there are enough airport staff that will have their holidays ruined so they persuade their collegues to vote No

I think 2 weeks on strike will be the end for some Tour operators and Airlines

I just can see Unite finding approx 1000 jobs for them

No more damage the econemy is fraggile enough