Could strikes close ports and airports?

A Whitehall source told me that the government is trying to plan for a potential 90 per cent of staff at the UK Borders to strike next week. Memos have been winging their way to all sorts of senior civil servants asking them to look around their workforce to see if they can spare people to work at airports and ports on Wednsday.

If the school closures are the biggest economic hazard for the government next week – parents staying away from work to mind the kids – the borders look like shaping up to be the biggest political risk.

The government says it is well across all this, has been planning contingencies for a long time and no-one untrained will be working the border posts.

But civil servants are even today still being asked to lend a hand, find spare bodies and send them to training. The real panic set in over the last three or four weeks when the Immigration Services Union (originally formed as a “no strike” breakaway union) said it was going on strike.

Their members have, in the past, helped by stepping into roles the PCS union has temporarily vacated to go on strike. Not this time.

Some with experience of the border situation think the government is not going to be able to plug the holes in the service and will have to close some ports of entry.

Could that mean a major airport or more than one of them? And just how many civil servants will want to volunteer to do a fast-turnaround quickie training course and then, potentially, take the rap if someone undesirable got through the borders on their watch?

Update: A little more detail on the quickie courses that civil servants are taking to staff the border posts on Wednesday.

There are two “modules” catchily known as “Module 1” and “Module 2” – the former trains you to look at EEA passports and the latter to look at non-EEA (visa) passports.

Module 1 is a one day training day including breaks. Module 2 is a two day course. There are pass/fail exams and I am told that the pass mark has just been relaxed from 70 per cent to 50 per cent – in a memo written on 16 November – especially to get the quickie border staff through the test.

My source explained to me that the courses prepare you for the most straightforward passports and cases and trainees are told that anything not straightforward should be passed on to “a more experienced officer.”

Problem is, how many “more experienced officers” will there be working on Wednesday? I’m told there are a total of around 30 at, say Heathrow Terminal 5, and my source would be “very surprised” if there were as many as 10 reporting for duty on Wednesday.

Update 2: And here is a transcript of that email sent last Wednesday that I mentioned. It suggests that the pass mark for the Module 2 exam has effectively been lowered to 50 per cent for the “reservists” on UKBA staff who normally do other jobs within the Agency but who’ve been trained up for eventualities like Wednesday week when they’re desperately needed to do passport checks.

It shows that people who failed the old 70 per cent threshold are to be told that as long as they got over 50 per cent they can work at Britain’s ports (unless there is “a real cause for concern”).

Names have been redacted.

My source believes that the new 50 per cent pass mark also applies to the civil servants being bussed down to Heathrow for training at the moment, but that isn’t 100 per cent clear in the email … though the phrase “the police that’s been decided” suggests it.

……………………………………….

From: Name redacted (UKBA International Group)
Sent: 16 November 2011 17:22
To:
Subject: Delegates who dont reach the pass mark for Module 1 and Module 2

Hi

Apologies it has taken me a couple of days to respond on this.

It is absolutely imperative that the trainers inform the delegates, on Module 1 or Module 2, if they don’t meet the mark.

If the delegates do not know they have failed, they start contacting ports enquiring about mentoring or deployment, totally unaware that they should not be deployed.

In the case of the small minority of Module 1 candidates who have not passed, we have informed the ports of their names in case they are contacted directly by the delegates.

The situation is more complex re those candidates who fail Module 2.

Those candidates who have failed Module 2 since July are listed below.

The policy that’s been decided is that those who gain 50-69% should be deployed unless there was a real cause for concern, and those who got 49% or less (this only applies to 1 candidate) should not be deployed to the non EU desk.

You can follow Garyon Twitter @GaryGibbonBlog