Strikes by airport workers could disrupt summer holidaymakers, union warns
Holidaymakers have been warned of the potential for strike action at Glasgow Airport over the summer as more than 800 workers from five companies are involved in pay disputes.
Unite the union said workers at Glasgow Airport Ltd, ICTS Central Search, Swissport, Menzies Aviation and Falck could be balloted for walkouts.
The union said on Saturday that if there is no successful resolution to the disputes in the coming days, it will move towards holding votes on industrial action within two weeks.
It warned strikes could 'ground planes and passengers'.
Pat McIlvogue, Unite industrial officer, said walkouts could be held from the middle of July.
More than 100 Swissport workers are locked in a dispute about rotas and work-life balance, according to Unite.
It said the company 'is demanding that workers at extreme short notice have to work shifts at various times and for various durations, which is directly impacting on their personal lives'.
Unite said some Swissport staff are 'struggling with chronic fatigue'.
A further 250 ICTS Central Search workers, who deal with passengers directly in the security search area and process them for flights, are currently involved in a dispute over under-staffing, working conditions and pay.
A total of 120 workers employed by Glasgow Airport Limited have rejected a basic 3.6% pay increase, with staff including airport ambassadors, airside support officers, engineers and managers involved.
The same 3.6% pay increase was rejected by 50 Falck firefighters who perform fire safety functions at the airport.
Meanwhile 300 Menzies Aviation workers, including dispatchers, allocators, airside agents and controllers, have rejected a basic uplift worth around 4.25%.
The union recently announced a series of what it said were wage wins for 100 North Air workers across Scottish airports, and more than 140 staff based at Glasgow Airport employed by ABM and OCS.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: 'Hundreds of workers at Glasgow Airport are heading towards summer strike action which would ground planes and passengers.
'The companies involved are all highly profitable and can easily afford to give our members better pay and working conditions.
'The truth is that they are denying fair pay increases to cynically boost their profits.'
Mr McIlvogue said: 'Unite is in dispute with companies at Glasgow Airport which could ultimately bring hundreds of workers out on strike.
'The companies can resolve these disputes with Unite before that situation happens by addressing the legitimate concerns and pay aspirations of our members.
'If the companies refuse to work with Unite to resolve these disputes, then we will have no option but to open strike ballots. This could mean strike action happening from the middle of July.'
A spokesperson for Swissport said: 'We are in dialogue with Unite – the talks so far have been constructive and we remain focused on working together to address the issues being raised.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
43 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Thomas Frank ally is leading search for new Tottenham manager
Tottenham Hotspur have cleared the decks for Ange Postecoglou's successor to arrive with a new backroom team by dismissing three of the Australian's staff, but Johan Lange has remained as sporting director to lead the search for a new head coach. Assistant coaches Mile Jedinak, Nick Montgomery and Sérgio Raimundo have followed Postecoglou out of the exit. Senior assistant coach Matt Wells and goalkeeping coach Rob Burch have remained in position, although it remains to be seen whether or not that changes when a new appointment is made. Sources believe that Thomas Frank is interested in taking over from Postecoglou and that he would ideally want to take a number of members of his Brentford backroom staff with him to Spurs. As revealed by Telegraph Sport, Tottenham sacked Postecoglou and chief football officer Scott Munn on Friday, but Lange has not been part of the cull. His position remains unchanged and he is expected to be helped by Fabio Paratici. Paratici has remained a consultant to Spurs and chairman Daniel Levy, and is expected to return to a full-time post at the club this summer once his worldwide football ban is lifted. Spurs understood to be 'carefully assessing' options Frank is considered a leading candidate to succeed Postecoglou, although his exit fee – believed to be in the region of £10 million – may still provide a stumbling block and interest has existed in Fulham manager Marco Silva and his Bournemouth counterpart Andoni Iraola. Tottenham are said to be carefully assessing their options, with Levy aware of the expense involved in hiring Frank, and Lange perfectly positioned to assess his capabilities for the post. Lange and Frank used to share an office when they were coaching together at Danish club Lyngby, and are said to have maintained a good relationship. That could be a boost to Frank, although Lange may also be aware of any of the potential drawbacks in Tottenham replacing Postecoglou with a coach who has never managed in a full European competition and is yet to win a title. As well as presenting their preferred candidate for the head coach role to Levy and the Spurs board, Lange and Paratici are expected to take responsibility for the club's summer transfer window. That may include decisions over the futures of defender Cristian Romero, who is wanted by Atlético Madrid and captain Son Heung-min, who has left some players and staff with the impression he could leave Spurs amid interest from Saudi Arabia. Telegraph Sport reported that Levy is facing the threat of a Tottenham player revolt over the decision to sack Postecoglou and the way in which it was done, and Son has led a number of dressing-room tributes to the Australian. In a message posted on Instagram, Son wrote: 'Gaffer. You've changed the trajectory of this club. You believed in yourself, and us, since day one and never wavered for a second. Even when others did.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE How YOU could find yourself wrongly accused of 'pump and dash' and hit with a £60 fine - as alleged petrol thefts hit all-time high
Petrol thefts have soared to an all-time high, figures suggest. MailOnline can reveal that 110,000 charges for alleged 'pump and dash' thefts were issued by two major fuel security firms last year. This marks a 20-fold rise in just six years. Industry bigwigs insist there has been genuine increase in drivers fleeing forecourts without paying, or 'bilking', especially in the wake of the cost of living crisis. Yet drivers say they have been incorrectly stung with threatening letters demanding hefty 'admin fees' on top of their supposedly unpaid petrol or diesel. In an attempt to recoup the costs of stolen fuel for petrol stations, many of which are independently owned, Forecourt Eye and British Oil Security Syndicate (BOSS) scan forecourts with numberplate-recognition technology. The two companies work with hundreds of filling sites and are considered among the biggest in the sector. Between the duo, they fired off nearly 113,000 requests to the DVLA for driver details last year. This is up from around 5,500 in 2018, according to data MailOnline obtained from the DVLA through Freedom of Information. Firms only request such data, which costs £2.50 a time and includes the car owner's name and address, if they intend to recover costs for non-payment of fuel. As well as seeking to recuperate the alleged unpaid fuel, companies may slap on their own admin fees. Forecourt Eye bolts on a £60 add-on. Drivers may feel pressured into paying up, even if they already forked out at the time. Some claim to have been threatened with being banned from forecourts up and down the country. There are several ways motorists can wrongly be accused of a 'pump and dash'. For example, if your card was declined and neither you nor the cashier noticed before you drove off, you are likely to be sent a demand. If a criminal has cloned your plates and genuinely steals petrol, you could also be on the hook for any fuel they have stolen. Criminal gangs have also been known to use entirely fake plates to dodge paying for fuel. Drivers also risk being falsely accused of bilking if a cashier selected the wrong pump (or failed to select one at all) when totting up your bill. If this happened, it would mean your fuel was technically never paid for, even if you paid for someone else's. This is the equivalent of a supermarket cashier failing to scan an item at checkout. Chris Mullen, for example, was accused of not paying £7.80 for petrol – even though he was driving a diesel car and filled up £30 worth of fuel. Despite fighting the claim from Forecourt Eye, thought to be caused by staff error, the 63-year-old from Stalham, Norfolk, said the firm 'insisted this was the case'. He was slapped with a £60 admin charge on top of the petrol he allegedly owed. After appealing, Tesco did issue a refund and an apology to him as well as a £10 gift card, which the motorist branded 'something of an insult'. Tesco told the Great Yarmouth Mercury that its processes were 'regularly reviewed' with regular meetings and new staff training to 'prevent errors from occurring'. Social media and forums are littered with similar stories of motorists claiming to have been falsely accused of driving off without paying. MailOnline's analysis can't prove genuine thefts have risen, it only shows that reports have gone up. Police data, however, suggests more than 27,000 alleged thefts occurred last year, in line with levels in 2020. About 95 per cent of cases are canned with no suspect being identified. Cops themselves moan they have 'finite resources' to probe suspected thefts. The Petrol Retailers Association, whose members run two-thirds of forecourts, says bilking robs them of around £100million a year. Petrol stations themselves have resorted to shaming 'pump and dashers' online in a bid to claw back the stolen fuel. One forecourt in Hythe, Kent, last summer shared CCTV footage of a blue car filling up with £120 of petrol before the driver got straight back into his vehicle and casually zoomed off without attempting to pay. Owner Sutha Hari, 49, claimed she wasn't going to bother alerting the police because 'nothing ever comes of it'. While there is no specific offence code for robbing from fuel pumps, it falls under the 'making off without payment' umbrella. It also covers restaurant 'dine and dashers', as well as people who make off without paying taxi drivers at the end of journeys. Thieves can be jailed for up to two years. Experts say petrol theft pushes up prices for law-abiding motorists. Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: 'It would be tempting to suspect that the cost-of-living crisis is pushing normally law-abiding people into committing this type of offence, but that would be an insult to the vast majority of people who continue to obey the law whatever their circumstances. 'Repeat criminals might well be pushing their luck more than ever because they believe other pressures on the police are such that they'll get away with it. 'Drive-offs might be seen as relatively low-level crimes in the grand scheme of things but they are corrosive to society, damaging to businesses and ultimately push up pump prices for law-abiding motorists and riders. 'More is being done to prevent these crimes through adoption of better surveillance systems and pay-at-pump options, but the numbers suggest the problem has been getting worse, with tens of thousands of drive-away fuel thefts each year. 'Those tempted to refuel without paying need to feel there is a real threat of being caught and punished.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Warning UK's housing crisis will deepen if Reeves makes further cuts in spending review
It comes as the struggle between the Treasury and Angela Rayner 's Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government over its budget continues, just days before Ms Reeves is set to outline the spending plans until the next election on Wednesday. With no agreement having been reached on housing, the chief executive of one of Britain's largest housing associations has raised the alarm that of a 'cliff edge' over building more homes – which means money is set to run out by 2026. The warning from Fiona Fletcher-Smith, chief executive of L&Q and until last week chair of the G15 group of London housing associations, comes as the Local Government Association (LGA) has warned that 51 per cent of councils are now running deficits on their housing budgets. Homeless charities are also warning of an impending crisis with new supply unable to keep up with increasing demand for social housing. Crisis has pointed out that over the past 10 years there has been a net loss of more than 180,000 social homes in England. Currently, 1.33 million households in England are currently stuck on council waiting lists for a social home. Ms Fletcher-Smith explained that the problem began with George Osborne's austerity budgets in 2010 when he slashed 63 per cent of the capital budget to build new homes. She said he then 'welched' on a deal to allow them to make up for the loss by charging CPI inflation plus 1 per cent in rent. which housing associations and councils now want restored for a decade. This will allow them to borrow money to build as it comes through as guaranteed income. The cumulative effect now means that housing associations no longer have the funds to build projects. Ms Fletcher-Smith said: 'Housing decisions are so long, it's not just planning permission, you've got to get all utilities, everything else lined up to build. It's a five to seven years to run in to build housing. We could see from our own predictions, we were just going to go off cliff edge, by 2025/2026.' The sector is also still struggling with the impact of the Grenfell fire tragedy in 2017, with thousands of homes now subject to problems with cladding which is costing them £2.6bn in London alone. In London alone, £4 million a month is being spent on 'keeping people in temporary accommodation' because homes with cladding are too dangerous to return to and clogged courts mean legal cases to fix the problem are taking years. Ms Fletcher-Smith also noted that the 'combination of Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine' has hit the sector not least with inflation which saw building materials go up as much as 30 per cent well above the 11 per cent peak of the headline rate. There are now fears that Ms Reeves and the Treasury will force cuts to the housing budget to balance the books as the chancellor seeks to ringfence health spending, increase defence to 2.5 per cent of GDP and water down proposals on benefit cuts as well as U-turn on ending the winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners. The deputy prime minister is leading a charge to protect budgets and instead push for a series of wealth taxes on big corporations and millionaires. But this has been resisted by Ms Reeves. However, the fears over housing are shared by homeless charities who are calling for 90,000 new social housing homes to be built per year. Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, said: 'This spending review is an opportunity for significant investment to start to see homelessness levels come down. 'Small tweaks aren't enough to fix the problems we face.' Mairi MacRae, director of policy and campaigns at Shelter, said: 'With homelessness at a record high and councils spending huge chunks of their budgets just to keep families off the streets, now is the time to invest in building social rent homes, not cut back." The issue is also vexing Labour backbenchers looking at the party's slide in the polls. One Labour MP said cuts in this area would cause upset among backbenchers, especially those with seats in areas with councils that are already on the verge of collapse. Another pointed out that Labour's flagship housing pledge 'means nothing if the current stock of social housing suffers" as a result of cuts. The government provides financial support to local authorities for social housing provision, including funding for new builds, repairs, and improvements. Commenting on the finding that 51 per cent of councils running a deficit with housing, the LGA warned: 'These trends are not sustainable. There is a growing risk to the financial sustainability of some councils' HRAs, and revenue pressures in councils' HRAs are now being passed directly into their HRA capital programmes.' In the Autumn Statement, the government announced over £5 billion total housing investment in 2025/26 to boost supply, including a £500m extension to the current Affordable Homes Programme which runs out in 2026. At the Spring Statement, the government announced a down payment of £2bn for a successor programme. To make it cheaper for councils to finance new development, the government has extended the preferential borrowing rate available for council house building from the Public Works Loan Board until the end of 2025/26.
