The strike action which British Airways cabin crew voted for last month was enormously popular. 11,000 of the 14,000 workers are in the TGWU, and 96% voted for strike action on an 80% turnout, There were to be 3 3-day walkouts. These figures are unprecedented in recent decades in Britain.

Transport and General Union boss Tony Woodley personally negotiated a deal with union-busting BA chief Willie Walsh which has left many of the airline’s workers furious. The website of the British Airways Staff Association had to be shut down due to the volume of comments hostile to the union leadership

The agreement has a two-year pay deal of 4.6 percent this year and will match the Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation rate next year. This runs from 1st February this year, and is not backdated, to the end of the last pay agreement in October 2006.

Both sides are claiming victory. BA claims the pay increase is 0.2% and 0% over 2 years, in real terms. Woodley however described the new package as a ‘significant improvement for our cabin crew members’. In addition four new non-pensionable increments will be added at the top of scale for new entrant cabin crew.

The increments will lift basic non-pensionable salary (excluding allowances) at top-of-scale for cabin crew who joined the airline after 1997 to £18,600. This is something of an improvement on the two-tier system that was a source of grievance to newer workers. But it still leaves then £8000 a year worse off than staff doing the same job who joined the company before 1997.

Woodley is backing the airline’s attempts to make BA’s staff either work longer to get their pensions or make much larger contributions. Given the shoddiness of the settlement it’s not surprising that the GMB is advising its 4500 members to reject it. They are being balloted on industrial action.

The shareholders have certainly made up their minds who won. BA’s share price shot up to its highest in 9 years when the deal was announced.

The workers at British Airways had the company over a barrel. They work on one of the major sectors of the British economy and could have won a quick victory. They were militant, angry and ready to fight. Their leaders sold them out.