This Friday marked the beginning of the strike called by the unions of Iberia’s handling workers in protest against the situation created following the non-renewal of licenses to Iberia Airport Services at key Spanish airports, an action which Juan Cierco, Corporate Director of Iberia, described as «inexplicable and irresponsible«, ensuring that «all jobs, as well as salary conditions, extra-salary benefits, and social benefits are guaranteed for life by the V Sector Agreement thanks, precisely, to the work carried out these years by the very unions now calling for a strike.»
The key point of the conflict raised by the CC.OO. and UGT unions (later joined by USO) revolves around the loss of working conditions when transitioning to the new companies winning the handling services, and Iberia’s refusal to perform autohandling at airports where it lost the license.
As detailed by the airline in a statement, at 9:30 in the morning, the services were carried out with «the normalcy typical of these dates of return after the Christmas holidays and with some specific incidents in the loading of luggage«, while minimum services were met with 83% punctuality.
At that time, the attendance of the scheduled staff was at 95% while the strike was followed by an average of 14.61% at Spanish airports.
The company had already informed at the end of December that it planned to operate 76% of the originally scheduled flights, also offering affected passengers rescheduling options, which more than 80% took advantage of, with 10% having requested a refund.
“The strike is irresponsible as it causes enormous harm to thousands of people whose travel plans are being disrupted after the Christmas holidays, as well as to the more than 90 airlines served by Iberia Airport Services that have been forced to cancel and modify flights”, added Ciarco.
“And the strike is incoherent, as the unions calling for it to demand self-handling are the same ones that have repeatedly expressed opposition to this process because, in their opinion, ‘it perverts the sense of license distribution, shortening the business for the winning companies, which negatively affects the working conditions of the employees’. The same incoherence that implies not accepting the subrogation that the unions themselves have defended for years in all other companies and now do not consider valid when it comes to Iberia.”
Initially, the union action is set to last until January 8th inclusive. According to Iberia, not only its operations will be affected, but also those of more than 90 clients to which it provides handling services.
