Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder and I'm afraid today Wednesday the 7th of June I'm talking about another strike. Yes, 31 days of walkouts have been called by the Unite Union at London Heathrow and unlike the previous disputes of which more in a moment

or the previous walkouts these will be spreading beyond Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 the Union which

is Unite is warning of disruption delays and cancellations this summer.

They say that this is a major escalation of a paid dispute and that more than 2,000 security staff will walk out for 31 days between June and August.

The dates are carefully chosen to have maximum effect. For instance,

they start on the 24th of June, they're mostly targeting weekends. They end on the 27th of August.

That's the bank holiday weekend. And the idea is to, of course course add to the pressure when families go on

holiday typically between the 21st and the 24th of July and the dispute at the root of this is

very simply about pay working in security which i've done as a, well, in the 20th century

at Gatwick Airport is stressful. It has a long hours, very, very anti-social schedules, because

of course, if people are going to be getting to the airport, I'll pass forward and expect somebody to be there to frisk them,

well, that means the person who's doing that has to get up maybe at three o'clock in the morning.

The airports can operate until, well, in the case of Heathrow, last flights go out just before 11 o'clock.

So, yeah, pretty anti-social. And furthermore, unlike a lot of jobs,

nobody is delighted to see you. Passengers just regard security checks as a necessary evil that

they want to get done as soon as possible. And the poor old staff have to cope with the fact that you and I are

very often stressed and anxious and worried and running late for our flights and so on. And so it's a

real mess. And so, therefore, the security staff say we need more money the simple fact is that heathrow isn't

offering enough general secretary Sharon graham says that these strikes will continue until

heathrow makes a fair offer to its wages she's really, and we've seen this sort of rhetoric in the rail disputes as well, that Heathrow is an incredibly wealthy company, anticipating bumper profits this summer, an executive paid Bonanza, also expected to pay out huge dividends to shareholders. Yes, its workers can barely make ends

meet and have paid far less than workers at other airports. And we're saying quite a lot of that.

Gatwick is the kind of poster child for our high pay, according to the Unite Union,

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