Ryanair cabin crew go on strike Friday in Belgium, Spain and Portugal over wage and working conditions
The chaos in air transport in Europe is intensifying after the strike of the flight attendants at Ryanair.
Ryanair cabin crew members went on strike in Belgium, Spain and Portugal on Friday in a dispute over wages and working conditions, in the latest wave of strikes by workers in various sectors in Europe.
The jump in inflation across the continent has resulted in millions of workers struggling with rising living costs, leading labor unions to demand higher wage increases, often accompanied by strikes.
Airlines and airport management companies face also labor shortages to be able to adequately manage passenger flow as demand for travel recovered with the end of most COVID-19 restrictions. Employees of many other airlines, such as British Airways, are also planning strikes this summer.
Ryanair cabin crews in Belgium, Spain and Portugal went on a three-day strike starting today. Staff in France and Italy were expected to be absent from work over the weekend. Crews in Spain are expected to strike again on June 30 and July 1-2.
Employees say the Irish airline is not respecting local labor laws on issues such as the minimum wage and are urging Ryanair executives to improve working conditions.
“Conditions are terrible,” said Ricardo Penaroias, president of SNPVAC, the union that went on strike in Portugal. “A crew member is not allowed to take a single bottle of water on a flight.”
Pilots and cabin crews at Brussels Airlines, Belgium’s Lufthansa subsidiary, also went on strike yesterday. In three days, Brussels Airlines is expected to cancel in about 60% of its 533 flights.
Belgium is likely to be hit hardest by the Ryanair strike, with local media reporting that 127 flights at Charleroi airport will be canceled, affecting 21,000 passengers. Ten more Ryanair flights a day are expected to be canceled at Brussels Airport.
In Lisbon, two flights have been canceled so far, both to Brussels. A total of 18 Ryanair flights between Brussels and Spanish cities scheduled for today and tomorrow have been canceled, according to the Spanish flight attendant union USO.
In Spain, the government forced the company to operate 73% -82% of flights during the strike period to provide minimal services, forcing most to work.
Ernesto Iglesias, from the USO, stated that the government’s decision restricts the right of workers to strike. Commenting on the situation in Spain, Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson said that workers there are demanding a 165% pay rise.
The SNPVAC union said many flights from Portuguese airports would not be canceled as the company had staff on standby and asked cabin crews in other countries to replace them. According to Ryanair, SNPVAC represents only 3% of its staff in Portugal.
Ryanair did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but told Reuters last week that it had negotiated employment deals covering 90% of its staff across Europe and did not expect any major problems this summer.
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Much of the mobilization concerns the transport sector and it is called upon to manage the return to travel after the lockdowns of the pandemic.
French unions today launched a nationwide strike by rail workers on July 6, and this week the protests paralyzed Britain’s rail network.
There are signs that the upset spreads to other industries – The French union CGT has announced a 24-hour strike today demanding higher wages for workers at oil refineries after the collapse of talks with TotalEnergies.
With inflation hovering around 8% in the eurozone, with Britain hovering around its 40-year high of 9.1% and in some Central and Eastern European economies in double digits, officials are worried that a wage-price spiral is emerging. , in which higher wage demands intensify inflationary pressures.
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde has warned that the higher inflation remains, the more likely it is to affect wage negotiations.
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