Overview

This book describes and analyses the 2003 British Airways (BA) Customer Service Agents’ (CSA) 24-hour unofficial strike. It examines the lead up to the dispute, in which negotiations failed to reach an agreement over the launch of BA’s Automatic Time Recording and Integrated Airport Resource Management systems, before focusing on the dispute itself and its eventual resolution. Central to the book is the question: why did a group of union members, the majority of whom were young women, become so incensed at an imposed change to their working practices that they took unofficial strike action? This they did in the knowledge that they could all have been legally dismissed. In analysing the strike, the book explores why BA’s management imposed such a controversial change to working practices on the company’s busiest weekend of the year. A decision which, allegedly, cost the company two-hundred-million pounds, tarnished its reputation, and saw numerous senior managers lose their jobs. How and why the CSAs’ three trade unions (the GMB Union, the Transport and General Workers Union and Amicus) reacted in such different ways to the unofficial strike, and then behaved so differently in the subsequent negotiations, is also central to this study.

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9781800790599

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Reviews

This book is a worthy addition to the long tradition of writing about strikes. Ed Blissett presents a crisp, engaging and highly readable account of a strike by customer service agents at British Airways (BA) in the early 2000s. The strike was notable both because the strikers were mainly young women and because of the issue at its heart: an attempt to extend management control over workers through electronic surveillance. The strike was also notable because of its impact - costing the business the GBP200M of the title - and because it was successful; nearly twenty years after the dispute BA management is still to fully automate its system of labour control. Ed Blissett was the GMB official responsible for Heathrow at the time of the strike, and he draws upon his own records and recollections, along with interviews with participants, to tell its story. His account is truly excellent, an essential read for anyone with an interest in work and working life in today's service economy. From the check-in desks at London's Heathrow Airport to British Airways' executive offices and from union meeting rooms to the Prime Minister's residence, a walk-out by BA's heavily unionised customer services agents turned industrial relations and political life upside down in 2003. Ed Blissett brings a unique perspective - as an established researcher and former union leader - to his account of this massive and controversial unofficial strike. As one of the union officials closest to, and most in sympathy with, the strikers, he draws on personal and union materials from the time as well as recent interviews with airline managers and trade unionists. He couples this insider's knowledge with a wealth of scholarly material on strikes, union organisation and management strategy to deliver a study that is both a compelling narrative of the conflict and a thoughtful assessment of the ebb and flow of workplace power.

Author Information

Ed Blissett (PhD) is Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations at the University of Hertfordshire. Prior to taking up this post Ed was, for over twenty years, a lay activist and then a senior Regional and National officer for three of Britain’s largest trade unions. His roles included six years as the Regional and National Officer for British Airways (BA) and then four years as Regional Secretary of the GMB London Region. These positions saw him play a central part in local and national union negotiations with BA, which granted him extensive first-hand knowledge of the 2003 strike and all the negotiations that preceded and followed the unofficial walkout. His background as a senior union officer at BA also assisted him in gaining unprecedented access to the unions’ lay reps, full-time officers and the airline’s managers, who played central roles in the 2003 strike and the ensuing negotiations.

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