The clock is ticking for British Airways. Within the next hour or so Gate Gourmet’s deadline will run out and, should BA not present them with a new contract to their liking, GG will self destruct. For a company struggling both to fend off budget airlines and cope with rising fuel costs, the overnight loss of their single catering supplier could be too terrible to contemplate.

Appearing on Newsnight last night, the Gate Gourmet spokesman stuck firmly to scripted reasonableness and insisted that they and the few permanent staff they have left were the real victims at the heart of this whole ordeal.

His position, it seemed, was firstly that if the little people sacked by megaphone would have just pissed off like they were supposed to there wouldn’t be a problem and secondly BA were refusing to give them a ‘fair’ contract.

Now it’s very easy to make assumptions and jump right into something like this, demonising one side while ignoring the faults of the other. My efforts to be fair and open minded towards Gate Gourmet have been hampered slightly by their choice of spokesman. If you were looking for a poster boy for cold hearted, corporate greed you couldn’t do much better, did you see his eyes when Gav H asked him if he wanted to apologise to the striking workers? Ouch.

Despite this I tried to judge him on his words, instead of his sharp suit and mean eyes, yet still he came up wanting. Now this whole story has already been considered in an earlier post, (‘grounded principles’) but it was two of his statements in particular that I wanted to focus on today to demonstrate something much greater than this increasingly dirty little fight.

When it was put to the GG spokesman that they had agreed to the existing BA contract when they took over the former catering supplier his response was blunt and determinedly ignorant. GG lost £20 million last year and all they want is a fair deal from BA. He would not, or could not, address the strange fact that the contract had apparently become unfair between GG taking it over and this dispute. GG are a business, he said, they have to turn a profit and BA are stopping them from doing that.

When asked about the workers, laid off in such an appalling manner, his response was somewhat familiar. GG lost £20 million last year, if they are to continue as a company they must make savings. If the people had accepted the new contracts, (presented, as I understand, without any discussion,) they could have kept their jobs.

Now these responses, to me anyway, highlighted the two sides of a great social divide in our world today. Simply put there are those who think there are more important things than money and those who don’t. To the guy from GG legal contracts and labour laws are simply abstract obstacles to be overcome and, quite frankly, how dare anyone suggest that they be otherwise.

The leader of the T&G union outlined the other side quite nicely, basically saying that yes, of course GG had to turn a profit but if the owners can’t do that without treating people like dirt then tough. Of course the capitalist’s answer to this would be good old ‘trickle down economics’, you know, if we do well everyone does well. Well take a look around, there’re a lot of people doing very well indeed, better than ever actually, and yet the gap between rich and poor is growing every day.

Having listened carefully to what GG have to say, I can’t find any sympathy for them. Their insistence that their failings are everyone else’s fault and that if only everyone would just do what GG wanted them to serve only to make the company sound like a petulant child. Worst of all, when they whinge they do so with apparently genuine hurt because they truly believe that they are entitled to their demands.

Now I could write several posts a day solely on things that piss me off on TV, but this goes deeper than mere annoyance. The attitude with which GG treated both its staff and employer is the very same that justifies sweat shops, child labour and inescapable poverty in other parts of the world.

Personally I hope BA tell GG to get fucked and announce that they’ve secretly arranged a new contract with another company, preferably not one from Texas this time. Companies do have a right to make profit, but on any prioritised list of rights this one must surely appear fairly low down. There are many things more important than money in the world, and no number of suits squealing, “gimme it cos I wannit!” will ever change that.