Monday, August 5, 2019
Heathrow Airport officials and labour union leaders from Unite the Union avoided the start of a two-day strike by workers at Europe’s busiest airport, agreeing Sunday to keep on talking with a mediator’s help for at least another day.
The airport cancelled 172 flights scheduled for Monday and Tuesday anticipating a work stoppage.
In a Sunday tweet, the airport advised passengers, “Unite has chosen to postpone its strike action on Monday, 5 August. Strike action on Tuesday, 6 August is still scheduled to go ahead. We continue talks with Unite tomorrow and remain hopeful that we can find a resolution putting a stop to this disruptive and unnecessary threat of strike action.”
It continued, “Airlines may choose to reinstate impacted flights. We regret that passengers have been inconvenienced by this and urge them to contact their airline for up-to-date information on the status of their service.”
As of 1:15 p.m. local time Monday, Heathrow had only 18 cancelled departures, according to commercial flight-tracking service FlightAware.
Security guards, firefighters, engineers and drivers at Heathrow had planned to go on strike at 12:01 a.m. Monday over an ongoing pay dispute.
Airport workers in the Unite union earlier rejected an offer that Heathrow officials said included a 7.3% pay increase over 2½ years.
Unite officials said they were focused on closing disparities between airport workers doing the same job, as well an “unacceptable” pay gap between workers and Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye; his compensation package is worth 4.2 million pounds ($5.1 million).
“It takes Mr. Holland-Kaye around two days to earn what some of the lowest paid Heathrow workers earn in a year,” the union said.
Tags: heathrow airport, Strike
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