British airport Heathrow has introduced pay cuts to deal with the financial ramifications of the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.
The organisation reduced the pay of less than 3% of its staff by 20%, while fewer than 1% of staff have received pay cuts by 25%. Employees negatively impacted will see these pay cuts last for two years maximum.
In addition, 42% of frontline staff will see their pay increase, while 6% of staff will see no change to their pay. During this time, there have been no compulsory redundancies introduced for frontline staff. However, 500 managerial positions have been made redundant.
Over 4,500 employees have been affected by these pay measures, with 99% of frontline staff accepting this proposal.
In response to the pay measures introduced, union party Unite has said that it will launch strike action against the airline over the Christmas break and into the new year.
A spokesperson at Heathrow said: “It is very disappointing that Unite has decided to take strike action during the worst crisis to hit the aviation sector. Our focus has been to protect jobs – which is why we have offered every frontline employee who wants one a job at a market rate salary above the London living wage, even despite a loss of over £1.5 billion to our organisation so far this year. We do not believe this strike action is necessary, but have activated extensive contingency plans which will keep the airport open and operating safely throughout this period.”
“Heathrow has been engaged in discussions with union leadership on proposals for over six months now. We have taken on-board several pieces of feedback and amended our offer accordingly, including widening the voluntary severance threshold, removing the defined benefit pension scheme from the proposal, increasing a number of salary ranges, and increasing the buy-down from 12 months to 24.”