2023-06-30 06:54:45
Around 60 flights were canceled on Friday morning at Geneva airport, which decided to temporarily halt operations between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. due to a strike by company staff.
In front of the doors of the main building of the airport, many police and security personnel only let in passengers with a late morning flight, as well as journalists.
Inside the airport, calm reigns. The trade unionists – around fifty – planted their red flags in front of the main gate of the airport, to explain their demands.
More than 60 flights have been cancelled, the airport management having decided to temporarily halt operations between 06:00 and 10:00.
>> Details in La Matinale: The Geneva airport staff strike has begun / La Matinale / 1 min. / today at 06:17
>> Lire: No flight Friday from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Geneva airport due to a strike
Disputed wage policy
The strike, which affects several critical services, has its origins in the overhaul of the salary policy desired by management.
“Situation 07:20 am. Due to a social action by part of Genève Aéroport (GA) staff, operations halted from 06:00 am to 10:00 am. 64 flights – departures and arrivals – canceled”, indicates a tweet from Genève Aéroport, adding however that “the seven long-haul flights (are) expected between 10:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m..”
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These include several flights from North America (New York, Montreal or Newark) but also Abu Dhabi and Doha, according to the airport’s website.
According to a count on Thursday, around 8,000 passengers were affected on departure from Geneva by the four-hour strike.
Jessica, a young woman who was to fly to Mykonos on an Easyjet flight with two friends, shares her dismay: “We got up at two in the morning to get here and catch the 6:30 flight. , and we are disappointed“, expresses the young woman. “It happens, strikes, I’m not once morest that, but we must at least warn people,” said the one who learned of the cancellation of flights in the morning twenty minutes before arriving at the airport.
>> The testimony of a passenger in La Matinale: Strike at Geneva airport: testimony of a passenger / La Matinale / 1 min. / today at 06:20
Geneva is in particular a very important hub for the low cost company Easyjet.
historic strike
The social conflict had been brewing for several days and, as a sign of discontent, the movement is renewable.
This strike is historic: it is the first involving airport staff employed under a public law contract (and not external collaborators, who are also vital to its operation), in the 104-year history of Cointrin, underlines the daily Le Temps.
“We can only understand this movement. The airport is a company which is profitable, which benefits from a monopoly and which attacks the conditions of the staff”, declared Pierre-Yves Maillard, president of the Union Syndicale Switzerland (USS), who came to support the strikers.
“You have staff who feel despised to such a degree that even here in Geneva, Switzerland, they end up walking off the job,” he noted, calling on the Geneva cantonal authorities and the airport management to take measures to decide on the new salary policy.
In a statement released Thursday, the airline Swiss warned that all Friday morning flights departing from Geneva will be affected.
Nearly 7 million passengers since January
The strike includes ‘also ramp control workers – the traffic controllers who control and direct planes in motion on the ground’, so no planes can proceed to the runway or boarding following landing, the airline said in a statement.
Over the period from January to May, the airport handled nearly 6.8 million passengers, according to official statistics.
This summer, 123 destinations are offered from Geneva and more than 3 million passengers must pass through the airport, Genève Aéroport indicated a few days ago.
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