Four German airports will operate at idle tomorrow Monday, as 351 flights will be canceled due to a 24-hour strike by their staff responsible for security checks, the ver.di trade union, which represents it, announced on Saturday.

“Longer waiting times and flight cancellations should be expected,” said the union, which earlier yesterday called for a strike to support workers’ demands for higher wages and better working conditions.

The 351 flights to be canceled were due to depart from Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg and Hanover and involve almost 100,000 passengers, according to airport group ADV.

Its general manager Ralph Beisel denounced what he said was an “abusive” strike called by the union, as airports try to deal with “the deepest crisis in aviation”.

ver.di is negotiating with the federation of aviation security companies (BDLS) and is seeking to secure “an increase in pay for night shift hours and those weekends and holidays”. He hopes that this strike, the third called since the beginning of the year, will have an effect.

“Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week has a negative impact on family life (…). Working conditions must be made more attractive so that a sufficient number of workers are willing to do this work,” argued ver.di.

The pay for these shifts has not increased “since 2006 and we have been negotiating an increase since 2013,” he explained.

At the same time, the same union and the management of the German postal service announced on Saturday that an agreement was reached for the 160,000 employees of Deutsche Post, which foresees an increase in wages by 11.5% on average, up to 20.3% for workers with lower earnings.

The compromise was reached after difficult negotiations and repeated strike action.