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Flight fiasco: Airlines in Spain and France call more June strikes
Air Nostrum pilots in Spain will down tools indefinitely, seven days a week, until demands are met
It would seem it’s too much to ask to have a summer without travel chaos but travellers are set to have their holiday plans disrupted again this month, with airline workers in both France and Spain upping the ante with more June strikes.
In Spain, Air Nostrum staff have been staging partial industrial action on Mondays and Fridays at all of the airline’s bases and work centres since the end of February. But with negotiations around their collective agreement at a standstill, the Spanish Union of Airline Pilots (Sepla) has announced that the stoppages will be increased to seven days a week from Tuesday June 6.
The workers’ representatives have blamed the “obstructive attitude” of the airline for the escalation, claiming that the carrier has had little interest in meeting to discuss terms. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transport in Spain will have to scramble to ensure minimum services are maintained for passengers, a measure which the unions disagree with on principle, since it’s a “distortion of the right to strike” that minimises the overall impact of the industrial action.
Air Nostrum, for its part, has apologised in advance for any disruption this will cause for travellers and a spokesperson said he hopes the strikes will prove “as harmless as possible for passengers.”
The Valencian carrier has offered a 13% salary increase over the next three years and a further conditional 3% for co-pilots, but the leading union has rejected this proposal.
In neighbouring France, the general airport staff strikes against the proposed pension reforms are entering their fourteenth day, with a fresh wave of cancellations and delays expected to hit seven effected airports on June 6: one in five flights at Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Bordeaux and Nantes will be cancelled, while a third of the flights will be axed at the Paris-Orly aerodrome, according to the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC).
The work stoppages in France will continue into next week and the DGAC has warned that dozens more routes will be impacted between Monday and Wednesday.
Workers are protesting President Macron’s proposal of raising the retirement age by two years, to 64, and increasing the contribution period required to access the maximum pension.
In the UK, security staff at London Heathrow Airport are also planning strike action for a total of 30 days across June, July and August.
Image: Air Nostrum
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