The recent callous layoffs and uncompromising antiunion tough talk from Gate Gourmet in the UK may have shocked some people, but its corporate parent, the Texas Pacific Group (TPG), has been doing business this way for years.
TPG was founded in 1993 with the aim of investing in companies that others would not want to touch with a barge pole. In 2003, TPG made a bid to take over the Portland General Electric (PGE) after its parent company, Enron, fell on hard times due to financial impropriety.
Their bid was rejected in March of this year after a cascading loss of public trust resulted from questionable tactics.
A former mayor was hired on as a consultant for TPG. His wife was a board member of the Oregon Investment Council, which controlled over $60 billion (£35 billion) in public funds and was TPG's largest investor. Days before the bid for PGE became public, the OIC had voted to invest $300 million in a new "Texas Pacific" fund.
In January this year, a local newspaper published confidential records in Chairman David Bonderman's 60th birthday party was the "most expensive bash in Las Vegas history" which Texas Pacific outlined their analysis of PGE.
Contrary to their public claims, this pointed out that TPG could lay off hundreds of PGE employees with ease, make over $5 billion dollars in five years and then end up selling PGE to another utility when they were finished.
Texas Pacific then argued that its "private analysis" shouldn't be taken too seriously (1). One need only look at the Daily Mirror's revelations (2) and subsequent denials by Gate Gourmet management around the current dispute to see uncanny similarities.
And TPG's dodgy dealings in the attempted PGE takeover are not an isolated example. According to a 1 July statement by the union UNITE HERE,
"Gate Gourmet unilaterally changed its health care plan, drastically raising the workers' costs", which resulted in many having to drop their health care plans altogether (3).
They have used the same arguments on both sides of the Atlantic to cry poverty and loss of profits while their executives live the high life.
The most dramatic evipackage for the whole of Gate Gourmet's Heathrow workforce.
Despite the union busting: profit-at-all-cost thinking of TPG and their cronies at Gate Gourmet, they have unwittingly fostered something they had not expected - international trade union solidarity.
A letter to Gate Gourmet's Chairman released on 26 August by President Bruce Rayner of UNITE HERE stated, "Let there be no doubt, we consider your assault on the union employees in London to be an assault on union members everywhere.
"We are outraged by such immoral behaviour and we expect that you will resolve this dispute by reinstating all of the fired workers.
"Failure to resolve the matter in the UK will certainly cause the unrest to spread across the Atlantic as our members will be forced to take every lawful decline, employers will continue to believe they can act with impunity to erode workers' rights and drive down wages unless union members can stanch the wound by replacing international pursuit of profit with international solidarity. 1 Nigel Jaquiss, 'Power Failure: How the PGE Deal Collapsed', Willamette Weekly Online: Portland's News Weekly, March 16, 2005 (http://www.wweek.com/story.php?st ory=6127&page=1) 2 Greig Box and Graham Brough, "Secret Plot to Sack BA Caterers' Daily Mirror, August 15th, 2005 3 Press Release, 'Gate Gourmet Teamsters and UNITE HERE Members Win Health Care Reinstatement, August 9th, 2005(http://www.unitehere.org/presscenter/release.asp?ID =949) 4 Face value: The Compassionate Capitalist, The Economist, August 6th, 2005, p. 58 5 Hugh Muir, 'US Unions Pile Pressure on Gate Gourmet', The Guardian, August 26th, 2005 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/ba/story/ 0,,1556708,00.html) would represent a long term threat to their own position as labour bureaucrats.
On the other hand defeat for AMFA would give management at NWA and as well as in other US airlines a green light to take on and destroy union organisation throughout the airline Industry - a relatively highly unionised sector of the US
It would also very probably encourage the ruling class to go on the offensive in the remaining sectors of the US economy where effective forms of union organisation still remain. The stakes are that high.
Online Sources
AMFA National Website www.amfa.natl.org
Labor Notes www.labornotes.org