Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Gate Gourmet sacked their staff

BA employees (some of them) went on strike in sympathy

Strike ended but GG staff still remain sacked

GG are now DEMANDING from BA that they pay them more money so that they don't put their own company (GG) into administration & have given them an ultimatum?

If I was BA, I'd say - "Go Play With Yourselves" & find a new catering company - one that can manage it's own affairs & stick to it's written contracts.

Have I missed something?

NotoriousREV

I must have missed it as well. If I was BA I'd be doing a deal with <insert any other catering company> right now.

Apparition

I'm wondering where the employment race equality is with all these GG employees. ?? Seems to be somewhat of an imbalance there.
IMHO of course.

AsifScoob

Part of it that the various catering companies have very close, even partnership type deals with the airlines.

There is not just the spare capacity in the industry/system that would be instantly available.

Otherwise the airlines would be paying for all the surplus infrastructure and they dont llike doing stuff like that.

GG probably had some sort of exclusivity type deal with BA, therefore completely dependant on them. BA in return get good service and cheap food, all v important in the price war with Easyjet etc.

I am sure thay are in talks with other suppliers. Wouldn't surprise me if other catering companies took on some of the sacked GG employees to do the same job.

Asif

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

I feel a career change coming on

MJW

It would seem that BA may have screwed GG to the floor on the price for their contract. This is not uncommon big firm bully boy tactics as practiced by many supermarket chains. Either that or GG have failed to realise what it would cost to administer the contract.

jods

I think it is more involved than that. BA takes 100% of GG business output BA then the turn the screws on pricing forcing GG to cut costs year on year.
Ultimately GG has been squeezed so hard the pips have come out by way of £40 million a year losses for GG who are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Rather inventive solution they have come up with. Sack all the expensive staff and ship in cheap labour from poland etc. Keeps co going for a little while longer. Costs UK Ltd though with additional dole payments hence higher taxes for the rest of us but WGAF.

Alternative is

"A fair days work for a fair days pay"

Solution :
GG re-employ some/all sacked staff
BA and GG renegotiate pricing to reduce / eliminate £40 mio pr year losses
BA re price flights to recoup £40 mio off passengers.

even assuming 20 million passengers a year which I think is probably very low that equates to £2 per passenger.

When you are dealing with very large numbers - very small %'s make a big difference - Devil in the detail.

Alan C

And the cheap labour / staff on minimum wage got cheesed off because GG were getting other cheap labour in and went on strike?

fast bloke

Puff - you are missing something (other than the screws we all know about ) - Gate Gourmet make something in the region of 30000 meals a day for BA in Heathrow. That is about 10 million a year. Thanks to Easyjet and Ryanair, BA can only afford to pay GG about 2 quid less than it costs GG to produce the meal. If BA pull the rug from GG, they won't find anyone else in the UK to provide those numbers of meals at those prices. If they don't find a replacement, they will have moved into direct competition with Easyjet and Ryanair, providing 'no frills' air transport.
The reason that easyjet, ryanair etc don't offer many if any flights from heathrow is that BA have been prepared to pay much higher landing fees for Heathrow. The low cost operators operate from the other three airports at much lower cost, and therefore much cheaper ticket price. BA can't compete on fare prices with the low cost airliners and still use heathrow. Heathrow can't lose BA and still operate at a profit. London/UK INC can't let its biggest and busiest airport go bust - that is mostly why BA can't tell GG to **** off and wise up

HTH

(Also, if Heathrow decrease the landing fares to allow BA to pay GG cost+%, easyjet and ryanair will steal the thunder and still beat BA on Heathrow fares)

David Lock

There isn't another suitable catering company at present.

dl

fast bloke

And looking back - it seems that BA couldn't produce the meals at a suitable cost, so they outsourced it - Gate Gourmet was formed to service that unique contract

r32

They outsourced it because they fly planes not cook meals, most Airlines buy their food in but for a few huge American loss makers. BA buy in most services. But they really should have two suppliers.......... but they did sell the business to GG in the first place...

Be interested to know what the wages are at GG as the employees didnt look well paid, is it below the minimum wage somehow? Not many white faces in the line up!

Suresh

Don't agree with that statement.
BA *could* easily afford to pay GG the going rate because it is actually making good profits (415Mio pre-tax in 2004, 124Mio Q1 2005). Higher fuel surcharges are quoted in the press as being good for the company...

On the other hand, if the management of GG accepted a contract that gives them a loss in the first place, then *they* are the ones who should be fired and not the low-paid grunts!

Personally I would never fly BA again after having had a bad experience with them years ago whilst flying ZRH-LHR on business - they put business passengers on stand-by because the business cabin was full owing to upgraded econ class - because they had massively overbooked econ class of course. That's laughable.


Suresh

Reality

And hopefully at 5.00pm they will lose their jobs. Once into administration the company will be put into an operating situation that will keep GG2 & BA in business. The only company with the infrastructure around heathrow to supply BA is GG - once all the Chiefs have been sacked it will leave the Indians (pun intended ) and some new (brighter) chiefs to carry on.

fast bloke

Sorry - you are absolutely correct - I should have said BA claim they can only afford......

It seems that the strike cost BA in excess of 50 million. Might have been a good idea to sort it sooner

Diablo

Yes.

Accurate reporting of the facts, among other things.

D

DPat

Yes, you all seem to have missed something - UK and European employment law that goes by the name of TUPE in the UK or ARD in Europe - Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment or Acquired Rights Directive

Basically if another co. wanted the business then *all* of the associated assets would transfer - machines, warehouses AND people on the same T&Cs and rates of pay.
So given that the deal loses £25m p.a., would you want the business?!?!?

DPat

SD

The people with the blinkers on in all this is the TGWU, again. They just expect GG to take on all the 'sacked' workers. To do what? Make them all redundant again at 5pm? Whatever the rights and wrongs of the way that GG shed it's staff, it's stupid of the TGWU to think that it can just afford to take them all back on again when it risks going into administration at 5pm anyway.

Bliming unions as usual seeing only one side of a multisided coin. Tony Woodley can't see the economics involved and thinks it's a simple case of nasty cash rich company vs innocent workers. And he claims they have public support! They don't have mine, that's for sure. Probably most people on here have been made redundant through no fault of their own, myself included. It's awful, it's a kick in the nuts, but you pick yourself up and you go and find another job. Picketing outside the company gates that may not even exist in 24 hours is pointless. Better off channelling those energies elsewhere.

Simon.

Reality

Not if the company goes bust.

Then there is no transfer of anything to anyone - that's what happened to Rover. Why take on the last companies disasterous problems.

Diablo

Nail on the head there.

Puff, you missed the original reason they were sacked. Unofficial, and unlawful strike.

I wonder what Woodley will be saying when there are 2,000 of them out of a job because of the bloody mindedness of the TGWU?

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

I reckon they should just stop serving food on short haul flights and they would save a packet and be able to pay GG the going rate for the meals they serve on medium and long haul flights.

I mean is it really necessary on a 2-3 hour flight to feed the passangers? I don't think so!

I flew from heathrow to Dublin and got fed and that was only a 45 minute flight, seems abit of a waste of time and money to me.

Diablo

Sorry mate, but thats wrong.

the TUPE regs apply in Liquidation/Receivership and Administration as well.

Unless it can be argued that only part of the business/assets have been transferred, in which case a comparative reduction in employees can be applied. In the case of Rover, there was sufficient time between insolvency event and sale so as to be a sale of assets only. There was no "business" sale.

What was left of Rover was ultimately sold to a chinese company. Last time I checked, China wasn't subject to Uk/European employment law in any event and is the plan not to move production out there? In any event, it wasn't a sale or transfer of the business.

boxst

Hello

American airlines generally work on that principle: Short flights you have to pay for food, and no alcohol at all on any flight unless you pay for it.

Having flown with BA most of my (business) life, it is a little strange to travel with an airline where I have to pay for things. So it would work, but BA would lose one of it's differentiators.

Steve

Reality

There was some Trades Union "God" who died a few years back who was from Dundee. He was Claimed as a God cos he "took on Ford" and won a great Victory for Dundee.

What was his Victory - As far a I could see he wanted a Single union Deal or he wasn't gonna let Ford build their new factory in Dundee.

Ford Built their Factory somewhere else.

Great Victory - ******** !

Reality

My definition of Bust matches what happened to Rover - but I'll accept you know more about this than I do .

Noone's gonna take on GG as they seem to have one customer and are losing £25Mil a year as a result - Unless he is a lottery multi-millionaire ex-Trade Unionist

Chrisgr31

Isn't the issue more complex than has been made out?

BA originally sold their catering arm to Swissair, Swissair subsequently went bust and the catering arm was sold to some american company. So the link from BA to GG is now quite long.

The problems with GG are not only down to BA. I think you will find that GG used to cater for Virgin as well. They lost the Virgin contract, and therefore need to lose the staff who were making the Virgin food.

The reason BA can't walk away from GG is that apparently no one else has the ability to provide the number of meals that BA require at short notice. Which when you consider the numbers is not suprising!

Belmondo

GG is owned by american venture capatilists. The main player in this venture group is also on the board of Ryanair. A number of the sacked staff at GG have spouses who work for BA hence BA strike.
However you look at it the BA management have dropped the ball big time. Imagine having BA staff linked to a seperate firm (over who you have no control) which in turn is being run for profit ONLY by someone on the board of a major competitor.
This american also had a birthday party recently which cost something like $6million. Not good pr if you then try to do over some workers on £6 / hr.

DPat

TUPE applies - the staff move with the 'entity' - the V contract in that case!

Flatcapdriver

Whatever the marital relationship is irrelevant as any secondary strike action is illegal and its scum like this who will eventually see BA go bankrupt if they continue to kick the company in the ***** at every opportunity. BA is one of the very few truly independant companies that exists without subusidies and is truly reliant on profits unlike the majority of European and American flagship carriers.

BA took the opportunity to renegotiate their contract with Gate Gourmet which extended it for a further 10 years with a cost reduction in the region of 20 - 25%. If this figure was impractical to Gate Gourmet then they should never have agreed to it in the first place and instead of blaming BA should look to themselves as the primary source of financial mismanagement.

The workers themselves are far from innocent given the outdated work practices they adopt in order to guild their lilly so if they stage a sit in against a back drop of profligacy and time wasting then they shouldn't really be surprised that they were sacked.

The Union is towing its usual party line with outstanding stupidity by trying to lay the blame at the door of BA who for once are innocent - the usual "nasty management" bollocks they trot out to disguise their camouflaging of inappropriate and morally corrupt working practices.

CharlesW

Does anyone remember the Grunwick dispute? Employer wouldn't recognise union - the courts backed them on this. Result unofficial strike, secondary picketing and intimidation.

The then government - Labour - could do b*ggar all. Result was that when Maggie got in all the trade union legislation was changed.