- A 24-hour warning strike has started at seven German airports.
- The Verdi union wants to increase the pressure in the current wage negotiations.
- Joint rallies are planned.
- Around 295,000 passengers, including around 3,000 Swiss passengers, are affected.
Some of the airport strikes in Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Dortmund, Hanover and Bremen started with the night shift on Thursday and led to the first flight cancellations in the evening.
As a precaution, Swiss canceled many flights to and from Germany on Thursday. The approximately 3,000 people affected were informed accordingly, said an airline spokeswoman.
Legend:
Gaping emptiness at Frankfurt Airport – almost all flights were canceled due to the Verdi strikes.
Reuters/HEIKO BECKER
At most of the airports affected, there are only individual flights or special connections. The German airport association ADV expects around 2,340 flights to be canceled by the evening. Even at non-strike airports, such as Berlin, there were restrictions and delays due to the strike.
Flights in the course of the security conference should not be affected by the strike at Munich Airport. Participants arriving in government planes will be processed.
Union demands higher wages and better conditions
Verdi has called on workers to step up the pressure on three ongoing collective bargaining disputes. “It’s about sending a really strong signal,” said Deputy Verdi Chairwoman Christine Behle on “Inforadio”. She pleads not only for higher wages, but also for better working conditions: “We have a catastrophic labor shortage.”
Because of the bad job conditions and low pay, many workers turned their backs on the airports. “If nothing happens now in terms of remuneration, then we will all face another chaos summer.”
The shortage of staff had led to long queues, massive delays and thousands of flight cancellations in the 2022 holiday season.
Airlines criticize strikes
Although airlines and airports have prepared as best they can for the Verdi strike, they speak of an unprecedented escalation. “Verdi is completely overstepping the mark here and carrying out the tariff conflict on the backs of the passengers,” argues the President of the aviation lobby BDL, Jost Lammers.
“An entire country is to be cut off from international air traffic in an unreasonable manner,” the airport association ADV also complained. The passengers would become the “plaything of the Verdi strike tactics”.