Customs officers at Gatwick Airport are staging a 24-hour strike in a dispute with management over working practices.

The dispute has caused very little disruption to passengers at the airport despite a continual flow of thousands of festive holidaymakers.

The Christmas Eve stoppage by the Public Services, Tax and Commerce Union and the Civil and Public Services Association is the result of a 12-month disagreement over new working rotas.

The BBC's Gary Duffy reports on the Gatwick strike. (30")

It is the second Christmas Eve in a row that the Customs officers have staged a 24-hour strike over the new work rotas brought in by the management. They also held a 48-hour stoppage on January 2 and 3 this year.

CPSA branch chairman, Jeremy Gautrey, said: "We want to get management around the negotiating table so we can negotiate an agreed settlement that our members can be balloted on.

"Support [among members] for the strike is 100%. Our members are quite adamant they will not have conditions of service eroded away by management.

"We regret having to take this action but believe the imposed patterns of attendance will not improve results at Gatwick in the longer term.

"The aim of the strike action is not to cause disruption to the travelling public but to send a message to local management that we want to get back round the negotiating table you can't impose worse conditions on our members."

HM Customs insisted that the action would not affect work to stop drugs and contraband traffickers. However, many travellers did not appear to have their bags checked.

At present, the one-year-old dispute is no nearer to being solved.

Officially, customs managers have made no comment about the strike but privately they have said that even though passengers have been allowed through customs without stopping they have mounted a low key surveillance operation to stop smuggling.

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