Baggage Chaos at Gatwick

[Eric Mc]

I haven't seen a thread on this yet so apologies if a repost.

It seems that the contractor who run this service at Gatwick, Swissport, completely misjudged the number of staff they needed during the holiday period.

This is rather strange because this company has been carrying out this particular service for at least 20 years. Did they suddenly forget how to run their business?

What went wrong and why?

[Eric Mc]

HoHoHo said:

Employer introduces 0 hours contracts and expect workers to work weekend shifts.

Workers say fk you and won't work.

Bags are apparently due within 55 minutes of plane arrival (that's as per contract)

Now I don't know enough about 0 hours contracts to comment either way other than you work and get paid and there are a lot of people out of a job. What the fk are the workers doing jeopardising the future of their employer?

It smacks a bit of 'we'll go on strike and show the bds.........oh, hang on we've got no job now.......'

Who's decision was it to go to Zero Hours Contracts - if that is indeed the reason?

Were Swissport struggling to survive on the wages structures they had been using?
As I said, they have been running the baggage handling at Gatwick for many years. It looks like something was changed and now the business can't really function - for whatever reason.

[Eric Mc]

And the question is - why?

[Eric Mc]

I was wondering that too.

However, it does seem that Swissport did not have any sort of emergency backup plan they could call into play.

Even though it may be rare that these types of sudden surge of flights needing to be dealt with happen, I am sure it musty have happened on more than one occasion in the long time period Swissport have been running this operation.