After a summer marked by a succession of strikes in the European airline industry, the end-of-year celebrations could also be a nightmare for French people planning to fly on vacation.
Strike notices and threats multiply to put additional pressure on management. Remember that the holiday season at the end of the year is crucial for the aviation sector, which is slowly recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Air Francethe flight crew unions UNAC and SNGAF have presented a strike notice for the period from December 22 to January 2 in the context of a social dispute over the collective agreement for flight attendants and hostesses.
“This notice should serve as a warning to our management,” according to a union brochure released Tuesday. “If this warning is not heeded, only a strong mobilization can tip the balance.”
“Caveat”
UNAC and SNGAF denounce the absence of a contract that extends the collective agreement beyond its period of validity and sanction a “pure and simple step in force” by an “address note”.
“Being at the mercy of a management that, with a stroke of the pen, can modify everything related to our profession at will is unacceptable,” write the unions.
“We are facing a management that understands, unfortunately, only the balance of power, even if that means running the risk of degrading the activity in a period as important as the end of the year celebrations”, they continue.
In a statement, Air France said it had “taken note of the strike notice.” “The company wonders about this notice when new negotiations with the representative unions of the PNC have been underway with the representative unions of the PNC since the end of September and should continue beyond January 2023.”
On the EasyJet side, the complaints of the hostesses and waiters never end. In a press release, the SNPNC-FO, National Union of Commercial Flight Personnel, warns “of a very significant risk of work stoppage for commercial flight personnel during the year-end holidays, in relation to salary negotiations.” .
“Mass Outage”
“After more than two years of colossal efforts by flight attendants and hostesses in France, during which our working conditions have drastically deteriorated due to serious strategic errors for which management alone is responsible, easyJet is proposing salary increases this year. The salary does not even cover inflation, and it rejects the main elements of our demands,” we can read.
“We are alerting our passengers to the risk of a massive disruption at the end of the year so that our customers can already organize. If easyJet management maintains its position, then it will be responsible for the disruption suffered by our customers”, threatens the SNPNC-FO.
In the rest of Europe, the social revolt also continues. Example with TAP Air Portugal which announced on Wednesday the cancellation of 360 flights (or 50,000 affected passengers) in anticipation of a two-day strike by cabin crew scheduled for December 8-9 to protest wage cuts.
This strike occurs in the context of the failure of the negotiations for a new company agreement between TAP and the cabin crew, whose union rejects the wage cuts.
Source: BFM TV
