Brown 'acting in union interest'

Mar 17 2010

Tory leader David Cameron has accused the Prime Minister of acting not in the national interest but in the "union interest" over the BA strike.

In stormy Commons question time exchanges, Mr Cameron repeatedly urged Mr Brown to back BA staff who cross the picket lines this weekend.

But Mr Brown sidestepped the question, instead urging management and unions to get together to resolve the dispute and accusing Mr Cameron of "total opportunism".

As the row escalated, Mr Cameron branded the Labour Party a "wholly-owned subsidiary of the Unite union" and denounced Mr Brown's "handwringing" as the sign of a weak Prime Minister.

Mr Brown hit back, insisting the Opposition leader's comments were "calculated to provoke" the dispute rather than reach a resolution.

Meanwhile, British Airways cabin crew leaders have called on the Government to launch an urgent investigation into the "rushing through" of 1,000 volunteer staff to help break this weekend's strike.

Unite wrote to Transport Secretary Lord Adonis warning that the use of "fast-tracked, under-trained volunteers" risked hitting the reputation of the company and of the country for high safety standards in the transport industry.

Unite voiced a number of concerns over the use of volunteers to stand in for thousands of cabin crew who are set to launch a three-day strike from Saturday in a bitter row over cost-cutting. It questioned the compliance of the volunteers with UK security checks as well as BA's duty to other governments to comply with their vetting laws.

The development came amid fading hopes of a last-minute deal to avert the strikes and a further four-day walk-out from March 27.

BA insisted that all the volunteers are fully trained and safety would never be compromised.