We know the Tories don’t care about working people – but this means trade unions can reinvent themselves

The gauntlet thrown down by RMT has quickly been snatched up by GMB and I should expect that more will follow, writes Ollie Cooper

The long line of dominos knocked over by Mick Lynch and the RMT were laid out so precariously by this government in the first place (Getty Images)

Allow me to offer some insight into the current state of affairs at British Airways: at ground level, it’s the same as it has been for the past 24 months. That, in itself, is the problem. Yes, the headline acts have changed, a new CEO has come in and there has been a reshuffle at management level, but no efforts have been made to address the gaping holes in the morale of their staff.

It is all black and white for members of the GMB Union. The 10 per cent of wages snatched away from staff at the start of the pandemic has yet to be restored. Similarly, there has been little in the way of reconciliation between those affected by former chief executive Willie Walsh’s “fire and re-hire” policy, and the management who oversaw it. The general sense of confusion over who is on what contract seems only to worsen by the day and if you add in the impending sense of doom felt by many in this nation following record-high inflation and crisis after crisis, you arrive at boiling point: 95 per cent of union members voting for strike action.

What this presents, in my view, is a wonderful opportunity for Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to sit back, relax (perhaps exert themselves as far as changing their airline for their respective summer trips away – I hear Ryanair are flying to Spain for as little as £9.99!) and wait for it to all blow over.

After all, the long line of dominos that have been knocked over by the RMT and its secretary-general Mick Lynch were laid out so precariously by this government in the first place. Of course, nobody can predict a pandemic that forces the aviation industry to take a $168bn (£137bn) hit. But, as we’ve found out, throwing money from the seemingly bottomless pot of gold at the end of Rishi Sunak’s rainbow is not the answer. Despite the £300m support package the transport secretary gave the International Airlines Group (IAG), there were still childish spats between Willie Walsh and transport secretary Grant Shapps, who hurled playground insults at each other, over how badly each of them had handled the pandemic.

Cast your minds back to the fire and re-hire policy that suggested 12,000 out of 42,000 jobs be sacrificed, only to be offered back at 80 per cent of their previous salary (oh – don’t forget the 10 per cent taken on top of that, that I mentioned at the beginning). Think also of P&O Ferries, who similarly fired and re-hired. This policy, whilst (somehow) legal, was abhorred in government, so much so that they… condemned it. Inaction, or “posturing” as those who employ this “strategy” like to call it, is rife at the top of this government.

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It is frankly staggering that the government hasn’t intervened at any stage. After all, what is the point of having a transport secretary if they aren’t protecting the industry, its staff and its customers? As a result, a real opportunity has presented itself to the unions. The gauntlet thrown down by RMT has quickly been snatched up by GMB and I should expect that more will follow – and not just in the transport industry. It isn’t hard to see the stark contrast between our inactive leaders, who often go no further than condemnation, with a go-getter like Mr Lynch, who may be one of the only union bosses to come out of a strike more popular than when he went into it.

What he’s doing isn’t rocket science, in fact he is keeping things remarkably simple. He understands that somewhere, amongst all the profit and projections, payrolls and pandemics, a line needs to be drawn. He isn’t asking for the world; he’s asking for fairness. Union bosses have a chance to move away from their demonisation as Marxists, or, as greedy fat-cats taking a bit too much off the top. (Rather oxymoronic, don’t you think?) Instead, they can move towards working actionable change for their members – what a union is on paper, not the conglomerates of evil that the Thatcher government so successfully painted them as in the 1980s. Are RMT and GMB the unions to spearhead the redemption of the movement? We must, at least, give them the chance to try.

But while we do that, spare a thought for rail workers and BA staff. The merry-go-round of poor communication between politicians, industry and unions only really hurts one group of people: the workers. Believe it or not, Mr Shapps, Mr Sunak and Mr Johnson have all still been taking home their pay packets without chunks missing, or a threat of redundancy. I’m afraid I just can’t accept the age-old adage of the “realists”, that bankers taking bonuses while the rest of us suffer is just “the way of the world” and neither, it seems, can BA staff.