STRIKE-hit Heathrow Airport plans to pay out more than £1.5 billion in dividend payments to shareholders while holding down staff wages, Unite said today.

The union warned of a “dividend bonanza” following an in-depth Civil Aviation Authority study into the expected five-year profits of Heathrow Airport Holdings (HAL), which runs the site.

The intervention came ahead of the latest strike by 1,400 security officers at Britain’s busiest airport, which faces another three-day walkout from Thursday in a dispute over plummeting take-home pay.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “These figures underline all that is wrong with Heathrow — mega payouts to the shareholders while the workers who generate the dividends are on poverty pay.

“This report confounds HAL’s claims that there is not enough money to give its lowest-paid workers a decent pay rise.

“The company knows it needs to do the right thing and pay our members a fair pay increase.”

Since 2017, real-terms wages have plunged by a whopping 24 per cent, according to the union’s research. 

The company fired and rehired its entire workforce at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, which “dramatically cut pay for many,” Unite said. 

Unite regional co-ordinating officer Wayne King added: “Heathrow regularly trumpets how successful it is as the UK’s premium airport so there is no defence in it paying bargain basement wages.

“Heathrow can clearly meet a cost-of-living increase for our members — they’re deliberately choosing not to, pushing our members deeper into financial difficulties.”

The airport said it recently offered workers a 10 per cent increase and a one-off payment, which the union did not put to members.