Iberia and the UGT and CCOO unions will continue tomorrow, for the third consecutive day, with the negotiations so that the workers of the ground service (‘handling‘) remain in the company’s orbit, after a four-day strike in the sector during the first weekend of January.
“We have continued throughout the day holding conversations with the company, looking for alternatives, and We have decided to continue talking tomorrow“, UGT indicated this Wednesday. The Spanish company has spoken along the same lines, sharing that “the conversations will be resumed tomorrow.”
The unions want to continue in Iberia and ask that it do ‘autohandling’ for the entire IAG group (Iberia, Vueling, British Airways, Air Lingus and level), but the company alleges that providing this service reduces its efficiency and that it is cheaper for it to be served by the winners of the airport manager Aena competition, in which the airline lost contracts at eight of the large airports.
The company is willing to negotiate “as long as the handling business and therefore the workers themselves are not put at risk” and remembers that The jobs and social benefits of the affected workers are guaranteed by the collective agreement of the ground handling sector.
Context of the strike
The conversations have been resumed after the strike called between January 5 and 8, coinciding with the return from christmas holidays, and which forced Iberia to preventively cancel 444 flights, with more than 40,000 passengers affected, although the airline said it had resolved more than 90%. In addition, there were delays in the delivery of suitcases.
Related news
The strike was called by UGT and CCOO -USO made its independent call but for the same days- after Iberia lost the ‘handling’ service in most of the main Spanish airports (except Madrid), which forces workers to be subrogated to the companies that won the contest. .
During the strike days The biggest problems were with the luggage delivery services especially in three of the twenty-nine airports in which Iberia provides this service: Barcelona, Bilbao and Gran Canaria. In the four days of strike in ground services, punctuality was greater than 80%, monitoring of the protest did not reach 20% in any case, regularity was 100% and no additional flights were canceled in addition to the 444 suspended flights. preventively, according to the company’s information.