TAP cabin crew start the first of two days of strike today. The protest, which begins this Thursday and ends tomorrow at midnight, will affect 50,000 passengers, according to airline figures. The company pre-emptively canceled 360 of its 500 scheduled flights for these two days, allowing targeted passengers to change their journey.
However, minimal services will have to be operated from Lisbon and Porto airports. The Court of Arbitration this week defined that minimum services should include three daily flights to and from the Azores and two daily flights to and from Madeira. In addition to the autonomous regions, the minimum provisions should also cover Portuguese-speaking countries and areas with Portuguese emigrants, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland.
TAP crew members are protesting the lack of understanding with the company in the negotiations for the new company agreement (AE) and have already admitted they will strike for another five days until January 31, if the company, led by Christine Ourmières-Widener, does not give in to the required claims. Among them is the issue of restoring the payment of supplementary aid and salary adjustment. TAP is guaranteed to negotiate with employees once these two days of interruption are over, to prevent the dissatisfaction from escalating and resulting in new restrictions on the operation.
Source: DN
