Europe’s low-cost airlines face a summer of discontent as workers in Spain and France announced fresh strikes over working conditions on Tuesday.
Unions representing Ryanair cabin crew in Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have called for strikes for the coming weekend, while easyJet’s operations in Spain face a nine-day strike next month.
Damien Mourgues, an SNPNC union representative at Ryanair in France, said the airline had failed to respect rest time laws. The union also called for a pay rise for cabin crew, who are still paid at minimum wage.
Cabin crew will disembark on Saturday and Sunday.
Strike action over the weekend of June 12-13 has already resulted in the cancellation of some 40 Ryanair flights in France – about a quarter of the total.
Ryanair’s low-cost rival easyJet is also facing nine days of strikes through July at Barcelona, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca airports.
The union said on Tuesday that easyJet’s Spanish cabin crew have the lowest wages of the airline’s European bases, with a basic salary of €950 a month.
A spokeswoman for easyJet said: “Should the industrial action take place we would expect some disruption to our flight programme” and “we would like to reassure our customers that we will do everything we can to minimize disruption.”
– “Chaos” in the aviation sector –
The strikes come as air travel has recovered since Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.
But many airlines that have laid off staff during the pandemic are struggling to rehire enough workers, forcing them to cancel flights. This also includes easyJet, which is particularly hard hit by the staff shortage.
On Monday, the European Transport Workers’ Federation “urged passengers not to blame workers for the airport disasters, canceled flights, long queues and longer check-in times, lost luggage or delays caused by decades of corporate greed.” and the removal of decent jobs in this sector”.
The association said it expects “the chaos the aviation sector is currently facing will only increase over the summer as workers are marginalized”.
In Spain, unions have called on Ryanair cabin crew to go on strike from June 24 to July 2 to secure their “basic labor rights” and “decent working conditions for all employees”.
Ryanair employees in Portugal plan to go on strike from Friday to Sunday to protest working conditions, as do employees in Belgium.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has rejected the strikes.
“We operate two and a half thousand flights every day,” he said in Belgium earlier this month.
“Most of these flights will continue even if a Mickey Mouse union goes on strike in Spain or if the Belgian cabin crew unions over here want to go on strike,” journalists said.
– Airport staff dissatisfaction –
But Ryanair pilots in Belgium decided over the weekend to join cabin crew in a strike starting Friday.
Meanwhile, employees at Brussels Airlines, a Lufthansa unit, have called a three-day strike starting Thursday.
In Italy, a 24-hour strike is expected to hit Ryanair’s operations on Saturday, with pilots and cabin crew demanding the airline comply with minimum wages set for the sector under a national agreement.
Ryanair continued to deny the threat of strikes, saying they were being called by minority unions.
“We don’t expect widespread disruption this summer,” an airline spokeswoman told AFP, adding that there are collective bargaining agreements in place at work, covering 90 percent of the European workforce, and talks are under way to improve working conditions.
“These strikes by minority unions are not supported by our crews,” the spokeswoman said.
Airports have also been plagued by staff shortages, leading to long lines at check-in counters and security checkpoints, and drawing the ire of travelers.
On Monday, a strike by security forces led to the cancellation of all flights departing from Brussels’ Zaventem Airport.
Cleaning staff at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport temporarily suspended their work on Monday after missing out on a bonus.
And at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, one of the largest in Europe, staff will go on strike from July 1st.
Meanwhile, London on Tuesday sought to stem a spate of cancellations at its airports by relaxing the requirement that airlines use their landing and take-off times or risk losing them.
The move will “allow airlines to plan ahead and deliver a realistic summer schedule that minimizes disruption at airports,” the government said.
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