{"id":24124,"date":"2020-10-08T13:19:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T12:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=24124"},"modified":"2020-10-09T10:32:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T09:32:16","slug":"heathrows-staff-pay-cuts-owes-more-to-boardroom-greed-than-this-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=24124","title":{"rendered":"Heathrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s staff pay cuts ‘owes more to boardroom greed than this virus’"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Horrific\u00c2\u00a0pay cuts of up to \u00c2\u01418,000 a year being imposed\u00c2\u00a0on thousands of\u00c2\u00a0Heathrow airport workers are the cost of\u00c2\u00a0eye-watering levels of debt and excessive payments to directors and shareholders, Unite has claimed today (Thursday October 8).<\/p>\n

Research by Unite, released to coincide with the beginning of an industrial action ballot by members employed at Heathrow Airport Ltd (HAL), lays out a catalogue of financial mismanagement and greed at the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leading airport demonstrating that it is this and not the pandemic, as the airport claims, which has brought it to its present\u00c2\u00a0unstable financial position.<\/p>\n

Unite says that\u00c2\u00a04,000 workers, many of whom are being asked to lose a quarter of their salary and are facing destitution as a result, are the UK’s\u00c2\u00a0latest victims of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098bandit capitalism\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 whereby the costs of\u00c2\u00a0bad boardroom decisions and reckless\u00c2\u00a0financial practices are dropped onto innocent workers.<\/p>\n

Huge debts <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The union has\u00c2\u00a0uncovered a vastly complicated corporate structure at the airport involving 13 different companies and subsidiaries. The total long-term debt across the group stands at an incredible \u00c2\u014116,676bn \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nearly double the debt of any of Heathrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0comparator\u00c2\u00a0airports. However HAL, which employs the workers, has assets valued at \u00c2\u014115.8bn.\u00c2\u00a0In 2019 the group had reserves of just \u00c2\u0141822m.<\/p>\n

In the last five years Heathrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debt has increased by nearly \u00c2\u01413bn, while since\u00c2\u00a02012, HAL has\u00c2\u00a0paid out \u00c2\u01414bn in dividends to shareholders. This includes \u00c2\u0141100m paid this year, after the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s operations had taken a huge hit from the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Unite argues that\u00c2\u00a0the airport ought to have been more responsible\u00c2\u00a0with the vast profits it made between 2014-19\u00c2\u00a0instead of squandering the money on\u00c2\u00a0dividends and increasing liabilities. Senior management and the board are not being asked to contribute to the savings programme, only staff.<\/p>\n

As HAL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0dividends are not linked to profits but are instead linked to its \u00e2\u20ac\u015bregulated assets bases\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, the more it builds and expands the bigger are\u00c2\u00a0its pay outs to shareholders in dividends.<\/p>\n

But, as Unite points out, it is not just the shareholders who have fared very well from Heathrow airport. CEO John Holland Kaye pocketed\u00c2\u00a0pay and pensions worth nearly \u00c2\u01412.6m in 2019, a\u00c2\u00a0remuneration package that\u00c2\u00a0is nearly three times that of equivalent airport bosses.<\/p>\n

Further, a\u00c2\u00a0total of 49 directors received over \u00c2\u014121,129m in pay and benefits from the Heathrow group of companies in 2019.<\/p>\n

Heathrow workers are\u00c2\u00a0being asked to make massive salary sacrifices in order to keep their jobs\u00c2\u00a0include airside operatives, engineers, firefighters and security officers. Rejecting the cuts, workers opted overwhelmingly to take a vote on strike action this autumn, with ballot papers being issued\u00c2\u00a0today (October 8).\u00c2\u00a0 The ballot closes on\u00c2\u00a0Thursday November 5.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Greed and mismanagement<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis research\u00c2\u00a0sets out a jaw-dropping\u00c2\u00a0catalogue of greed and mismanagement at the heart of our major airport,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 commented Unite regional co-ordinating officer Wayne King.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHeathrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s present predicament owes more to boardroom greed than this virus.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Once again a UK-based business has rinsed a national asset for all it is worth and then told\u00c2\u00a0low paid workers that they have to pick up the tab for this recklessness.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis labyrinthine set up has\u00c2\u00a0directed oceans of\u00c2\u00a0money out of Heathrow\u00c2\u00a0through unsustainable and unjustified\u00c2\u00a0dividends and telephone number salaries to directors.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThere is clearly hefty sums of money in the bank, enough to get through this without destroying people’s lives, yet\u00c2\u00a0Heathrow’s management wants lowly paid workers to pay for their sorry financial practices. This sort of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098bandit capitalism\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is immoral and should not be allowed in modern-day Britain.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHAL needs to stop now peddling the myth that the coronavirus has ruined its financial outlook.\u00c2\u00a0 Workers did not create the precarious balance sheet which has been years in the making and they should not be made to pay for it.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 hard work has generated multi-million pound profits for this airport so we are determined that they are\u00c2\u00a0not going to pay for the corporate chaos and excess of Heathrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s senior management, and the public will support them on this.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bPeople will not understand\u00c2\u00a0why poorer workers are carrying the can for something that they have no responsibility for yet\u00c2\u00a0senior managers and the\u00c2\u00a0boardroom are making no\u00c2\u00a0salary sacrifice whatsoever,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 King added.<\/p>\n

He continued, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bHAL made this mess, not the workforce. It is their duty to clean it up responsibly and without driving thousands of workers onto the breadline.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe urge HAL to withdraw its\u00c2\u00a0fire and rehire proposals. Work with us on a fairer and more stable way forward because this course of\u00c2\u00a0action will destroy not just the lives of these workers but the businesses and communities that they support across the UK,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 concluded King.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the pandemic Heathrow boasted<\/a> it had \u00c2\u01413.2bn to see itself through the pandemic even with no passengers.<\/p>\n

Heathrow has\u00c2\u00a0received over \u00c2\u014126m from the government to furlough workers as part of the job retention scheme. It has also confirmed that it will take advantage of the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new job support scheme but despite this additional financial support it is not prepared to revisit the proposed pay cuts.<\/p>\n

By Barckley Sumner\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horrific\u00c2\u00a0pay cuts of up to \u00c2\u01418,000 a year being imposed\u00c2\u00a0on thousands of\u00c2\u00a0Heathrow airport workers are the cost of\u00c2\u00a0eye-watering levels of debt and excessive payments to directors and shareholders, Unite has claimed today (Thursday October 8).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1214],"tags":[125,102,195,126,1055],"wps_subtitle":"Blame for vicious assault on Heathrow workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 wages laid firmly at boardroom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s door, research reveals","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24124"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24124"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24155,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24124\/revisions\/24155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}