George Hibberd and Finlay Asher, two of Safe Landing’s co-founders, presented to Unite The Union’s Gatwick Liaison Committee (GLC) on Friday 4th September. The Gatwick Liaison Committee brings together the three Gatwick branches of Unite’s ground handlers, security and accessibility staff. They meet once a month to discuss workplace issues, workers’ rights and pay disputes.
‘Cleaner Kerosene’ and ‘Zero Emissions Flight’
George and Finlay were invited to present to the GLC after George presented the Workers’ Assembly concept to them back in April and June. This time they covered two topics – ‘Cleaner Kerosene‘ and ‘Zero Emissions Flight‘. The former outlined ultrafine particle pollution (UFP), where it comes from, the impact it can have on aviation workers, hydrotreating kerosene (jet fuel) as a solution to reducing UFP pollution, and how the union branch could campaign for cleaner kerosene. Zero Emissions Flight presented the potential for hybrid electric aircraft to reduce both air pollution and noise pollution and their impacts on aviation workers and communities surrounding airports.
Two motions proposed
A motion on ‘Cleaner Kerosene‘ and ‘Zero Emissions Flight‘ was presented for the union to discuss on vote through their branches. Any member of any union is free to use these two motions, edit them as necessary and propose them at their respective branch. Feel free to email Finlay and George if you have questions or need help with this – finlay@safe-landing.org and george@safe-landing.org.
Next steps
The Unite branch members were all in favour of the branch campaigning for both cleaner kerosene and zero emissions flight. As a result, Finlay and George have been asked to present to the Gatwick branches’ Health and Safety Committee on 25th September to strategise the next steps to making this happen.
The committee was finally invited to our next Climate Fresk in London on Sunday 27th September at Waterloo Action Centre, London. They were encouraged to consider running in-house Climate Fresks for their branch members as a way of informing and empowering their members on climate change and how to tackle it in our industry.
Workers’ Assemblies – the big picture
More broadly, the question and answers session post-presentation proved once again how keen workers are to engage in discussion of these tricky subjects that require expert input, member deliberation and informed and representative recommendations for union executives. But to do this workers need time, space and a forum to do this. In Safe Landing, we believe that Workers’ Assemblies are the perfect solution.
We will continue to work with the GLC to push forward scoping a Workers’ Assembly on health and safety and air pollution. We also plan to form relationships with other liaison committees at Heathrow and other major UK airports.