Iberia and the CCOO, UGT and USO unions have concluded their meeting this Wednesday without obtaining an agreement before the four days of strike called to coincide with the Three Kings holiday (from January 5 to 8) in Iberia’s ground assistance service (‘handling’), after the airline lost the service concession in eight of the main Spanish airports.
The company has regretted the lack of agreement with the unions callers of the strike and has reiterated that the mere call has already caused ““an enormous detriment” to thousands of people who are seeing their trips alteredas well as the more than 90 airlines that Iberia Airport Services serves and that have been forced to cancel and modify flights.
The protest has forced him to cancel 444 flights, which has affected 45,641 passengers. The company assured this Tuesday that it had already provided a solution to 90.9% of these travelers (80.2% were relocated to other flights and 10.7% had their money returned).
Customers who wish to do so can still request your changes through the Iberia website, from the travel agencies where they have made the purchase or from the company’s Customer Service Center, which has reinforced its staff, but where they may find longer waiting times than usual. Furthermore, the company has assured that continues working to relocate the rest according to the possibilitiestaking into account the complexity of the dates, just after Christmas, and the high load factor of the flights.
He conflict has its origins in last September, when Iberia lost a competition to manage handling at the airports of Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Málaga, Alicante, Gran Canaria, Tenerife South, Ibiza and Bilbao. That is, the most relevant in Spain, except for Madrid. Aena thus decided to grant the concession to Aviapartner, Groundforce (Globalia), Menzies and Swisport. These winning companies, as Aena explained at the time, had to take over the current staff of handling services, some 11,290 employees.
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Unions They do not want this subrogation because it means leaving the Iberia umbrella. Calling on Iberia to do ‘autohandling’ (manage its own flights) for all companies in the IAG group (to which it belongs along with British Airways, Vueling, Aer Lingus and Level). Initially, they called a strike for December 29, 30 and 31 and January 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8, 2024, but the first of these protests were put on hold after the Government’s mediation in the negotiations.
“Iberia has not posed at no time any alternative and his only obsessionin an exercise of cynicism, is to ensure that we are not profitable and that ‘autohandling’ is not a viable option because it attacks the competitiveness of the IAG group companies. One more lie“The tenders have not been lost because of the economic offers presented but because of the lack of technical offer and therefore, the cost of the workforce was assumed by the group companies,” CCOO criticized on December 28.