The strike was not easily won. The government, most of the establishment and 'The Thunderer', as the The Times newspaper was then nicknamed, supported Bryant & May. But the intelligentsia of those days, including the formidable Annie Besant, William Stead, the editor of the influential Pall Mall Gazette, Catharine Booth of the Salvation Army, Graham Wallas, the prominent economist and George Bernard Shaw the playwright, lined up shoulder to shoulder in support of the 1400 women and, a few days later, Bryant & May gave in.
If the Match Girls' strike typified some of the worst aspects of the industrial revolution then the strike of the Heathrow girls typifies important new problems of work-life balance in modern society. It has a good chance of going into the history books also in due course. Very briefly, for those not of this queendom, British Airways management suddenly instituted a new system of swipecard clocking-on when the staff started their shifts at Heathrow airport -- called automatic time recording (ATR).
There was nothing wrong with this in principle, of course, but the senior management imposed ATR peremptorily without discussion and hadn't realised that a significant proportion of the counter staff were, in fact, mothers with young children who had been attracted towards this work at Heathrow, and the peculiar hours of their shifts, because they could coordinate the care of their children with child carers, nurseries and husbands' hours of work. In time, these domestic arrangements developed into even more complex patterns including mothers on one shift looking after the children of staff on other shifts. Indeed, a practice of 'tarmac transfers' developed. When starting their shifts, some mothers would bring their children to the car park at Heathrow and hand them over to other staff who had just finished their shift and were going home. ATR would have banged this informal practice on its head.
Unlike the Match Girls in 1888, who needed a great deal of financial and moral support before they walked out, the Heathrow Girls struck immediately, even before informing their full-time union officials. However, the senior management remained obdurate and it was several days before the whole matter was successfully resolved (yesterday) with the help of trade union officials and sensible advice in some of the newspapers. But it was a costly matter involving the cancellation of 550 flights, the accumulation of 80,000 angry customers in the terminal buildings and in temporary tents outside and �45 million in lost revenue. It has cost BA an unestimatable amount of goodwill and could very well precipitate its demise because it was already badly managed and losing out heavily to smaller airways.
I think this strike will go into the history books because it is a good example of the cramping-out of genuine leisure time (and money) in an increasing number of working lives in the large cities -- where most modern jobs exist, of course. Between work and commuting, there is precious little free time left for young adults during most of the week -- and increasingly over the week-ends and during the night -- especially if they are raising young children. In keeping to the expected standard of living and, for status reasons, the expected repertoire of consumer goods that must be seen in the home, then people are working and commuting so much that there is hardly any more leisure time left.
All this has already been been rendered down into one phrase: The problem of work-life balance. This is increasingly the biggest problem of modern times in our our 24/7 working lives in developed countries. For young adults who decide to marry or live together, life has never been more psychologically, rather than physically, stressful. Already, they have personal debts far above anything that has been known before. And, in very recent years and on a huge scale in England and America, even their homes might be at risk if the interest rates rise even a small mount above present low levels. It is no wonder that family size has been dropping to levels well below replacement rates in recent years.
It is for much the same reasons of work-life balance that I believe that the bonanza is over for the producers of the present repertoire of consumer goods. The present crop will continue to be produced, of course -- albeit at increasingly lower profit margins due to competition -- but the prospect for brand new status goods seems to me to be very poor from now onwards, not so much for lack of money by the richer end of the middle class, but for lack of time and energy to use them.
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Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
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