Heathrow summer strike threat lifted as improved pay deal agreed

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The threat of serious disruption to travel at the UK’s busiest airport this summer has receded after staff at London Heathrow accepted a revised pay offer.

More than 2,000 members of the Unite trade union working as security staff at Heathrow on Friday cancelled a series of planned strikes. They had been due to walk out on a total of 31 days over summer in a dispute over pay.

But the problems facing England’s NHS deepened as junior doctors announced the longest strike in health service history. Tensions escalated between the government and the British Medical Association as the union announced that doctors below consultant grade would strike for an unprecedented five days from 7am on July 13.

For airport workers, the revised offer, which unions had recommended members accept, is for a 10 per cent pay rise this year, backdated to January, which will increase by a further 1.5 percentage points to 11.5 per cent from October. The previous offer had been a 10.1 per cent salary increase for the whole year.

Heathrow has also guaranteed its staff a pay rise for 2024 matching consumer price inflation, with a minimum increase of 4 per cent.

Unite had said the strikes, timed to coincide with the busiest days of summer leisure travel, were bound to disrupt flights, with one-day walkouts scheduled to continue until late August. Union general secretary Sharon Graham called the settlement a “hard-won victory”.

Heathrow said it was pleased Unite’s members had accepted the offer. “We can now move forward together and focus on delivering an excellent summer for our passengers,” the airport said.

The union’s success in forcing the employer to offer extra money is the latest sign of workers’ increased bargaining power as the UK faces a combination of stubbornly high inflation and a tight labour market.

However, there are several long-running pay disputes that continue to cause disruption in other sectors, particularly in health and on the railways.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union, representing many groups of rail staff, on Thursday announced its members would strike on July 20, 22 and 29 at 14 train operators in Great Britain over pay.

However, a resolution to the NHS dispute also appears far off as junior medics pursue a pay rise to compensate for what they say is 15 years of pay erosion. Health officials said an initial demand for a 35 per cent rise had been increased to 49 per cent by next year.

The government had presented an opening offer of 5 per cent and there were “active discussions” about a range of measures to improve the working lives of junior doctors, the Department of Health and Social Care said. However, the BMA junior doctors committee “had turned their back on negotiations by announcing further strikes”, the health department claimed.

The committee said it had been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished “but not once have we heard from [prime minister] Rishi Sunak or [health secretary] Steve Barclay in terms of reopening negotiations since their collapse of our talks and cancelling all scheduled meetings a month ago”.

The government could avert the strikes “by coming to the table with a credible offer on pay restoration”, said junior doctors.

Separately, a Royal College of Nursing ballot, aimed at securing a second six-month mandate for strike action, closes at midnight on Friday with the result believed to be on a knife-edge.

A “no” vote to further walkouts by the nurses would be a rare bright spot for ministers after more than six months of NHS strikes which have led to the cancellation of more than 600,000 operations and appointments.