Germany: Verdi union calls more airport strikes on Thursday
March 12, 2024
Trade union Verdi on Tuesday called on members to strike this Thursday, March 14, at five German airports in all.
The action would not affect Frankfurt and Munich airports, the busiest two in the country.
Security staff screening passengers at Karlsruhe/Baden Baden and Cologne/Bonn airports were told to stop work on Thursday.
And at Berlin, Hamburg and Stuttgart airports, security staff for passengers, goods and freight, as well as those in customer service areas, were told not to work.
Both trains and planes in Germany were affected by strike action on Tuesday.
Several different labor disputes have broken down simultaneously, leading to a series of industrial actions targeting Lufthansa, airport operators and national rail operator Deutsche Bahn.
What Verdi said about the strike
Thursday's strike would last for the entire working day, Verdi said.
The union said that five rounds of negotiations were yet to yield a deal on improved pay for some 25,000 members. It's negotiating with the Berlin-based BDLS agency that's responsible for airport security nationwide.
"The employers did recently submit an admittedly improved, but far from satisfactory offer. We will not come toegether this way," Wolfgang Pieper, lead negotiator for Verdi, was quoted as saying in a press release. He said members were ready to increase the pressure with another strike and warned that the action might be expanded. "It's now incumbent on the employers to finally sumbit a substantially improved offer," he said.
He said the offer would involve pay increases in stages over two years, but said that "for two years it is less than we demanded for one year. It's not enough."
Verdi says it's calling for an hourly wage increase of €2.80, higher performance-based bonuses and better terms for overtime. It says the measures are necessary to counteract inflation in recent years.
msh/wmr (AFP, dpa)