More than 1,000 Heathrow catering jobs at risk in new Covid cuts

More than 1,000 jobs are at risk at Heathrow in a catering company serving Covid-stricken airlines such as British Airways, according to union representatives. Do & Co is making 1,068 staff redundant, the Unite union said, in the latest employment blow for the aviation sector. The company will be left with about 500 staff at Heathrow. The pandemic has caused dramatic losses and job cuts across the global airline industry and in the supply chain that serves it. Airlines such as BA have already made thousands of job cuts in the UK, and in September the boss of Heathrow warned that local areas could become like “a mining town in the 1980s” because of the extent of job losses. Do & Co reported that its global revenues fell by 87% between April and June because of the pandemic. Unite said the company had refused to put its workers on the government’s newly extended coronavirus job retention scheme, unlike other airline caterers at Heathrow such as dnata and Gate Gourmet. The job retention scheme will support 80% of the wages of furloughed workers from Thursday, when the new England-wide lockdown begins. The first of the workers received their redundancy notices on Friday, meaning hundreds could have their jobs made redundant before Christmas.<br/>