Heathrow Airport’s security guards’ summer-long strike action has been put on hold after the airport put forth a better offer in an ongoing “poverty pay” issue.
The Unite union had requested that its employees who work at the security checkpoints in Terminals 3 and 5, as well as the airside vehicle checkpoints, go on strike beginning on June 24.
A total of 31 days of strike action were scheduled, posing a travel chaos risk to the hundreds of thousands of families hoping to take advantage of the summer vacation period for an international trip.
However, this most recent round of walkouts marked the first time security officers at Terminal 3 were also participating in the conflict. Heathrow had managed to deal with an earlier wave of strike action with little inconvenience.
However, the union declared on Monday that it had postponed the first weekend of strike action while its members cast ballots on a revised compensation offer that Heathrow had put up.
“Following extensive talks with the workers’ union Unite last week, an improved pay offer was made by HAL and, as a gesture of goodwill by the union, the initial strikes were called off,” the union said in a statement.
“Members will now be balloted on the latest offer and they will decide whether or not it meets their expectations,” Unite’s regional co-ordinating officer Wayne King continued.
In May, Heathrow handled 6.7 million people, increasing its advantage over competitor airports in Europe like Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt Am Main, and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
