Urgent Appeal for Solidarity with Gate Gourmet Workers at Heathrow Airport
Submitted on Tue, 08/16/2005 - 1:00pm
By Eric Lee - From www.labourstart.org:
Last week, in an extraordinary display of corporate bullying, the company which provides British Airways with its in-flight meals at Heathrow Airport sacked some 800 workers -- using a megaphone.
In response, baggage handlers at Heathrow -- members of the same union as the Gate Gourmet workers who had just lost their jobs -- walked off the job in solidarity. Within hours, the entire airport was essentially shut down, stranding thousands of passengers and costing millions of pounds.
And yet the company, the American-owned Gate Gourmet, refused to consider reinstating the sacked workers and negotiating a fair deal with the union.
According to some media reports yesterday, the company deliberately provoked its own employees in order to rid themselves of "troublemakers".
The dispute has captured the attention of the mass media in Britain and elsewhere, and has been covered extensively on LabourStart.
Now the workers have appealed through their union, the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), and their global labour federations (the IUF and ITF), for your help.
Please go to http://www.labourstart.org/gategourmet and send off your message to the company today. Tell them to talk to the union and to reinstate the sacked workers immediately.
That will take you all of 60 seconds.
Our intention is to flood the company with thousands of email messages from around the world, to show our support for low-paid workers who have lost their jobs in the most brutal manner.
But please don't stop after sending off your message. Forward this message or a similar text to everyone on your union's mailing list.
The workers at Gate Gourmet are counting on you. Remember: an injury to one is an injury to all!