There have been some really interesting and very good points brought up in this thread. I have been involved in ground handling for over 30 years, and my career has taken me around the world including a lot of consulting, training and workshop facilitiation.
I have found two major issues - lack of understanding of the SGHA and misguided use of the SLA as a root cause of many of the relationship problems between airlines and their handlers. Of course there are a myriad of other issues - high staff turnover, poor management training. etc.
The SGHA Main Agreement and Annex A is a generic document, it therefore has to remain relatively vague in many areas. The Annex B is the part of the SGHA that is specific to the agreed services for a particular location. Therefore the Annex B should be where all the details of the agreement should be recorded. For example - comail. The Main Agreement (Terms and Definitions) state comail should be treated as cargo. How many places is it actually delivered with the baggage and the not the cargo?
E-Tickets do not need to be specified in the Annex A because they are covered in the definition of tickets in the Main Agreement.Virtually everyone uses the SGHA Simplified Procedure where only the Annex B is produced and signed, albeit with the Preamble stating that both parties are familiar with the Main Agreement and Annex A. How familiar are they? My experience of training and facilitating SGHA workshops is that there is a knowledge gap in far too many cases. Usually the Main Agreement is only dragged out when there is a contractual dispute
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The SLA is IMHO a key document. Where the SGHA states what services will be delivered, the SLA agrees how they will be delivered. The SLA should not be a process manual, but focus on the agreed service standards. The agreed service standards must be measurable too. Used properly the SLA can help build a non-confrontational relationship between the handling staff and the carriers representatives.
Operational and commercial people within the organisation have to work together to make sure that nothing unachievable or unrealistic is agreed in the SLA.
SLA'a do not have to have penalty clauses by default. There has been an example SLA published in the IATA Airport Handling Manual (AHM 803) for some years.