STRIKING BALANCE

As a member of Unite, the large union which includes the Association of Professional Tourist Guides amongst its member organisations, I suppose I am bound by trade union rules. How far these apply to freelance tourist guides is a moot point, however.

I was thinking about this when I heard that Unite was going to help the striking BA workers financially in their dispute with a management anxious to cut costs to ward off competition from cheaper airlines. Some of that money will come out of my subscription which is paid by direct debit so I have no choice in the matter and will probably grin and bear it. Thuis is despite the fact that most BA cabin crew have beter incomes and a lower level of qualification than guides.

We have been here before in the travel business - tour companies trying to pay guides/tour directors less to reduce prices. I have mixed feelings about the issue seeing it from both sides (typical Guardian reading fence sitter, moi) but ultimately you cannot argue with financial pressures. What did Maggie Thatcher say? You can't buck the markets.

Well, no-one is more market vulnerable than a tourist guide facing plenty of competition for bookings, downward pressure on fees and a market that seems to shrink all the time as people arrive to service it (another load of new guides have passed their blue badge exams recently).

Trade union solidarity is all very well but, if one of those well-groomed glamorous BA picket lines was at Heathrow or Gatwick when I arrived to pick up a group of jet-lagged tourists anxious to get to their hotel, would I cross it? Of course I would. Doing otherwise would be professional and financial suicide because it would result in me being classed as a guide who accepted a job and then failed to turn up. The phone would stop ringing and I would be out of work and pcoket. Would those same BA strikers then pay my mortgage and support my family? I doubt it.

Call me a scab if you like, but I (and every other tourist guide worth his or her salt) would always put their own professionalism above support for a strike no matter what their views were. Trade unionism may have protected our fee system but loyalty has its limits...