The Easyjet dispute highlights important lessons for building better businesses and a fairer society
Easyjet cabin crew are to vote over the coming month on potential strike action this August.
Their dispute over the company’s offer of a small pay increase highlights some important lessons for building better businesses and a better society.
Firstly, that Unions have a vital role to play in addressing low pay and the gaping income gap between those at the top and everybody else.
These are problems that everybody wants to solve.
However the left might caricature the Tories, they’re not sitting in castles chuckling about inequality. Prior to the election David Cameron exhorted businesses to give their staff a payrise. Boris Johnson said this week that the top rate of tax should not come down without a significant increase in the minimum wage. He’s previously stated that we need to shake ‘the cornflake packet’ to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to get to the top, and has fulminated against the ‘extraordinary’ growth in income differences within British companies.
The problem is that merely talking about these issues – usually alongside implausibly optimistic platitudes about the role of education making things better in the future – will not improve the current pay and conditions of ordinary workers or achieve a fairer balance of incomes between those at the top and everybody else.
What is really needed – and even the International Monetary Fund and Hedge Fund billionaires recognise/fear this – is an empowered workforce, with trade union representation giving them the capability to secure a better deal for themselves, rather than hoping for a hand-out from their employers inspired by politicians speeches.
Easyjet workers are showing how workers can fight for a better deal; but it happens too rarely in Britain, where we have amongst the lowest level of collective bargaining coverage and worker participation in company decision-making in Europe.
The second lesson from the Easyjet dispute relates to excessive executive pay, and how it does companies no favours whatsoever. Research for the High Pay Centre found that industrial conflicts are more common in workplaces with bigger pay gaps. Easyjet CEO Carolyn McCall was paid £7.7 million last year, more than 150 times the average Easyjet employee. According to Unite the Union, many cabin crew staff get little over £10,000 as their basic salary and are reliant on bonuses and commission to top up their total pay package.
Mccall’s pay was cited by the Easyjet Union when rejecting the company’s pay offer, just as ITV staff brought up CEO Adam Crozier’s £8 million pay package when balloting for industrial action last year. It’s no wonder that this kind of different treatment for people who are working for the same company and contributing to its success proves irksome, increasing the likelihood of industrial conflict.
Easyjet has, of course, been successful, with pre-tax profits of over £500 million last year. But it’s legitimate to question the value of such successes to the wider economy, when a tiny number of people grab a disproportionate share of the rewards.
Luke Hildyard is a contributing editor at Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
42 Responses to “Why the Easyjet pay dispute matters”
engine85
You’re not too bright are you Charlie, did mommy drop you on your head as a child ? ? Thankfully, people like you will never be anything more than a pawns in life, queuing up down the job center each week because nobody will employ you or put up with your militant attitude, you’re the reason we employ eastern europeans, and thats exactly what will replece your sacked staff, because they are willing to work for their money, not simply beg for it or want it for nothing.
blarg1987
How long would it take to replace a CEO, with an individual who would do the job for a third of the pay and double the hours managing a similar if not bigger industry in, eastern Europe, Asia or south america? Answer not long.
Funny how the top end of society ring fences itself while expects it from others, utter hipocracy.
blarg1987
By that logic, would you allow greater consumer choice and allow people to know which company you own (assuming you do) so those who disagree can voice it by not buying your products?
Striking is sometimes the only way some companies will listen to staff. It is worth noting that easy jet cabin crew in the UK are on worse conditions then their European counterparts.
If the company has been treating their staff unreasonably claiming poverty etc, and ignoring requests to negotiate then they can’t be surprised if people strike because management have not been more then reasonable form the get go.
blarg1987
Well Germany has TU reps on the board and look at their industry!
There is a lack of trust which does not help when the man on the street is being told he can;t have a pay rise because the company is struggling, however the company tells shareholders it has record breaking profits and is paying larger dividends.
stevep
In the 1970`s you could turn on the kettle, watch TV, fight fires and bury the dead 99.99999% of the decade. It`s a little bit disingenuous saying you couldn’t and then blaming it all on the unions.
The 1970`s were a decade of rampant energy price hikes as a result of wars and oil cartels in the middle east. Inflation spiralled out of control as a result. Thank goodness for the unions fighting to keep pace with it on behalf of their members.
We didn`t all swallow misleading Tory election propaganda wholesale back then, A lot of people remember it well and know the truth.