Channel 4 - Dispatches on Baggage handlers

Redwurzel

Redwurzel

Well-known member
No wonder there are problems at airports. The baggage handlers at Manchester Airport get £9.60/hour that is for working through the night such as 3 am. They can get a minimum rate of £10.10 @ LIDL for working fairly normal hours and a 10% staff discount. The employers can't understand why its difficult to recruit. The baggage handlers that turn up often have to do the work of 2, because they are so short staffed. I think we are fed mis information such as staff problems because of BREXIT, Security checks take months, trainnig takes several months etc. No the major reason is pretty obvious £9.60/hour for working through the night. And of course they were dismissed during Covid.

A warning to on pilots many are flying extra hours, pilots don't seem to have tachographs. There are lots of pilot shortages according to the programme.
 
The employers at Manchester Airport are a Swiss company - not UK Government.

Nearly all the airports were privatised/sold by Thatcher in the late 1980s.

In non-Covid years, a big City airport must be a licence to print money.

I am sure capital (profits) is put well before labour (staff, except those at the top).
 
Redwurzel said:
The employers at Manchester Airport are a Swiss company - not UK Government.

Nearly all the airports were privatised/sold by Thatcher in the late 1980s.

In non-Covid years, a big City airport must be a licence to print money.

I am sure capital (profits) is put well before labour (staff, except those at the top).
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Another success for privatisation!!
 
Redwurzel said:
No wonder there are problems at airports. The baggage handlers at Manchester Airport get £9.60/hour that is for working through the night such as 3 am. They can get a minimum rate of £10.10 @ LIDL for working fairly normal hours and a 10% staff discount. The employers can't understand why its difficult to recruit. The baggage handlers that turn up often have to do the work of 2, because they are so short staffed. I think we are fed mis information such as staff problems because of BREXIT, Security checks take months, trainnig takes several months etc. No the major reason is pretty obvious £9.60/hour for working through the night. And of course they were dismissed during Covid.

A warning to on pilots many are flying extra hours, pilots don't seem to have tachographs. There are lots of pilot shortages according to the programme.
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This is another area where it appears that Brexit is the problem but it is actually the solution.

The problem was greedy companies paying the bare minimum for jobs that should pay more. They could get away with it by hiring people from abroad. Now that supply has gone the wages should go up to match the true value of the job and people might actually choose to do the job. Instead these companies will do anything but raise wages and hope someone else subsidises it or allows them to import cheap labour.

In reality, the minimum wage should only be used for any job that anyone would be happy to do but requires no skill/qualification. Anything that is difficult to do, hard to access, seasonal, short-term, dangerous etc should be paying a premium to encourage people away from those easier minimum wage jobs. The excess supply of people willing to work minimum wage for a job in any conditions has just allowed these greedy businesses to get away with paying peanuts. There has been massive wage stagnation at the bottom level, disguised by the fact the government have been raising the minimum wage.

At least everything is cheap and businesses can be "competitive" though (y)

I'm sure most people wouldn't begrudge inflation for the right reasons (people being paid their true worth).
 
Swissport despite the name is a Chinese company owned by HNA Group. It was started by Swiss Air in 1996 but sold in 2018.

I don't know its profits figures but its revenue was £2.5bn in 2018.

I am sure HNA would say UK privatisation has been a success for them. While the loser to me are the UK Governments and its citizens. (working for £9.60/hour @ 3am)
 
Nano said:
The problem was greedy companies paying the bare minimum for jobs that should pay more.
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Shareholder Value Maximisation. Britain and America are the main countries who follow this. Incentive people in Executive positions with salary tied to share price and they will do anything to maximise profit to increase the share price. A way of doing this was recruiting people from poorer countries who would accept lower wages. Another example, was closing manufacturing facilities and opening them in cheaper places in Eastern Europe. This was done to benefit already very wealthy people.
 
Swissport have a lot of the service contracts at the airport, but don't own the airport. The airport is owned by Manchester Airports Group a for profit ,business.

MAG say 95% of passenger are currently happy with the service they get and the secret video footage was filmed in June so to them is a long time out of date.
Nero said:
Shareholder Value Maximisation. Britain and America are the main countries who follow this. Incentive people in Executive positions with salary tied to share price and they will do anything to maximise profit to increase the share price. A way of doing this was recruiting people from poorer countries who would accept lower wages. Another example, was closing manufacturing facilities and opening them in cheaper places in Eastern Europe. This was done to benefit already very wealthy people.
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I agree with Nero Shareholder Value Maximisation is much more important nowadays especially where the CEO's monetary rewards is directly aligned with share price. Thus the price of labour is driven down to lowest possible point, especially where labour is seen as a commodity like buying fuel or a loan. This model could work if everyone was a shareholder, but most workers don't own shares in the companies they work for and have no effective say in key decisions such as compulsory redundancies.
 
Shocking the pay they receive for working unsociable hours. As it currently stands there is no legal right to pay employees higher wages for working during the night although i know from personal experience that many companies do pay their employees more for working unsociable hours but as the dispatches documentary shows there are companies who will use this legislation to their advantage. I think there should be a national minimum wage for working unsociable hours.
 
I am sure employers are investigating right now how they can solve the night time problem...


........................with robots.
 
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