{"id":10900,"date":"2016-12-20T17:49:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T17:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=10900"},"modified":"2016-12-21T14:30:29","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T14:30:29","slug":"swissport-strike-called-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=10900","title":{"rendered":"Swissport strike called off"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>A breakthrough on the pay and conditions of baggage handlers, check-in staff and ground crew employed by Swissport has seen Unite, the workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 union, announce today (Tuesday) that a pre-Christmas strike has been called off.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The 48 hour strike, poised to begin at 00.01 hours on Friday 23 December, would have seen over 1,500 frontline airport staff walk out in 18 airports around the UK.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite shop stewards will now take the offer, made at talks convened by the conciliation service, Acas, back to their members.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite has been working towards measures that would address the problem of chronic low pay at Swissport with some baggage handlers earning only pennies about the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s minimum wage level of \u00c2\u01417.20.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Commenting on the breakthrough, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThat the strike is called off is obviously good news for Unite members and very welcome news for passengers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bNo worker likes taking strike action but often the threat of it is the only way to make headway in very frustrating circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAll along we have said that these workers have a powerful case.\u00c2\u00a0They are employed on poverty pay rates \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this union says that this is not good enough and so we are determined to win them a better deal.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThat is what these excellent stewards have made headway on today.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe now take this offer back to the members for their consideration.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLastly, I call upon British Airways to pay heed.\u00c2\u00a0This union is clearly open to reasonable negotiations.\u00c2\u00a0 We sincerely hope you take a leaf out of Swissport\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book and meet our members halfway on what is also a very just cause, the call for a living wage and equality for these young workers.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite members had voted by 62.5 per cent to reject a 4.65 per cent three year pay deal for 2015-2017, barely keeping pace with inflation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite has Swissport members at the following airports: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Doncaster, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Gatwick,\u00c2\u00a0Glasgow, Heathrow, Leeds\/Bradford, Luton,\u00c2\u00a0Manchester, Newcastle, Southampton and Stansted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A breakthrough on the pay and conditions of baggage handlers, check-in staff and ground crew employed by Swissport has seen Unite, the workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 union, announce today (Tuesday) that a pre-Christmas strike has been called off. &nbsp; The 48 hour strike, poised to begin at 00.01 hours on Friday 23 December, would have seen over 1,500 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[511],"wps_subtitle":"Breakthrough on pay and terms","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10901,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10900\/revisions\/10901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}