Temps have found themselves at the centre of the Heathrow in-flight catering row that left thousands of air passengers stranded.

The T&G union accused in-flight meals company Gate Gourmet, a supplier to British Airways, of using temps as pawns in the industrial dispute that sparked the chaos.

An agency called Versa Logistics, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gate Gourmet, supplied the 130 Eastern European temps to replace 670 sacked workers.

On Wednesday, 10 August, the T&G claimed Gate Gourmet bought in the temps without discussion, even though it had just sacked the full time workers and asked the remaining staff to sign a contract cutting their wages. These actions prompted the workers to go on strike, the union said.

An investigation by the Daily Mirror newspaper claimed Versa brought in the workers from Poland, trained them at secret bases, then paid for their accommodation in the UK.

Gate Gourmet denied accusations in the paper that it had deliberately tried to provoke an industrial dispute, claiming that a management team that had since been sacked proposed the scheme.

But Gate Gourmet accused the full-time staff of outdated and inefficient work practices, claiming staff often took a full day’s pay for half a day’s work and refused to help colleagues on other work lines if they were not busy themselves.

The full-time staff also fiddled overtime and were paid above market pay rates for below market productivity, the company said.

Kevin Barrow, partner at Tarlo Lyons, a legal firm specialising in the recruitment industry said the conflict was a result of the globalisation of the labour market.

He said: “With outsourcing, you take the whole process and move it somewhere cheaper. This is the opposite, you have moved cheap workers from their location to the UK.”

The Gate Gourmet row caused a wave of unofficial sympathy strikes at Heathrow, which grounded thousands of flights.