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Terminal turmoil, PCS members in terminal 5

9 May 2008

Instead of fanfares, Heathrow's spanking new Terminal 5 opened to scenes of chaos ? but PCS members continued to provide a service to passengers in this vast new airport

"There was no drinking water point – except outside the passenger toilets – and we weren't allowed to bring bottles of water airside."

"Terminal 5 is absolutely vast. We spent most of the first days telling staff how to get from A to B."

"Airports are a complex operation. It only takes one thing to go wrong for the knock-on effects to be enormous."

These are just some of the comments from PCS members about Heathrow's much-heralded new Terminal 5, which opened to scenes of chaos at the end of March. Enormous queues built up, dozens of flights were cancelled, and thousands of items of baggage had to be left behind when passengers boarded their planes.

Meanwhile, PCS members at T5 worked through the chaos to provide a range of services to passengers, despite a number of unresolved problems, mainly to do with accommodation, which impacted on staff.

"There are four or five different sections to the arrivals immigration control. But there was no gateway for staff to move between these, which meant that some staff had to go outside into the hall and then back round again to move between sections,"

reports Stephen Taylor, a PCS rep for Immigration Services at T5. Stephen also reports the lack of drinking water for staff and the absence of sanitary facilities, and even toilet paper, in the staff women's toilets.

There was an upside for immigration staff however. T5 opened to only a third of excepted capacity – long-haul BA flights are still in the process of being transferred to the new terminal – and that lifted the pressure from staff, at least to begin with.

The sheer size of the new terminal was a problem for many staff, says Amanda Redgrave, services team leader covering the 800 security and search staff in T5.

Transferred across from Terminal 3 in January, Amanda says she didn't realise the scale of operation of the vast new building. "It was still not all opened, even up till the official opening day. It's so vast; I'm still finding places I didn't know were there!" The problems for her staff on the first day were "geographical", she says. "We spent a lot of time explaining to staff where to go and how to get there."

Amanda, like other staff at T5, put the scenes of chaos down to "teething problems". Paul Smith, PCS negotiations officer and aviation group secretary, explains that "airports are very complicated – it takes only one thing to go wrong to cause chaos, and then our members take the flak."

While the teething problems of operating the new terminal continued into its first few weeks, staff working for BAA or its contracted companies face longer term problems. A boardroom coup earlier this year forced a change of chairman.

And PCS members were dismayed by the reported comments of a senior manager who talked about opening T5 as a "union-free" area.

"There are salutary lessons to be learnt from the opening of T5," comments Paul Smith. "A new project of this scale has to be done with the staff, not in spite of them. Our members went that extra mile on behalf of BAA to mitigate some of the problems.

"It's vital for management to engage with the unions in advance to iron out any issues. It's the people who do the job who know what's going to work, and what's not."

The drive of BAA – as with other employers – to outsource the running of operations also raises wider concerns, says Paul. "Airports need the capacity to deal not only with the problems seen with the opening of T5, but also the dangers of terrorist threats and potential accidents, such as the recent case where a plane fell short of the runway. You need staff who know how to respond and deal with these situations."
 

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