It is a banderilla planted by the Spanish unions in the summer performance of low-cost airlines. The pilots of the EasyJet company in Spain thus began a three-day strike on Friday August 12 to demand a return to working conditions prior to the Covid pandemic.
According to a Spanish media, this strike led to the cancellation of more than 30 flights which had in particular for origin or for destination the cities of Geneva, London, Paris or Freiburg. Note that the government has imposed a minimum service for international flights ranging from 57% to 61% depending on the airport.
If this social movement was limited to the weekend (from Friday to Sunday), the pilots of the British company have planned to stop work again this next weekend (from August 19 to 21) then again from Saturday 27 to Monday 29 and this in the airports of Barcelona, Malaga, and in the Mediterranean islands of Palma de Mallorca and Menorca…
Different employment contracts depending on the country
This strike is « l’unique option (…) in the face of refusal the company “to restore the conditions that the pilots had before the Covid-19 pandemic and to negotiate” a new collective agreement, justified the Spanish union of pilots Sepla in a press release. According to the latter, the representatives of the pilots have tried to negotiate, in vain, for more than six months, with the management, which has already rejected three proposals.
“During the worst months of the pandemic”, Easyjet pilots accepted a pay cut “to guarantee not only jobs, but also the very survival of the company in Spain”, adds the union, which points to the return to a volume of flights similar to that before the health crisis.
Are the working conditions for Easyjet pilots really worse than in other countries, as claimed by Sepla? «What we can say in any case is that the company offers different employment contracts depending on the country where it is established, indicates to The cross Michael VanTil, secretary of the Easyjet SNPL office in France. Initially, the employees of a base like Madrid benefited from good employment contracts. But after the closure of the latter, Easyjet opened smaller ones, in which the employment contract is less expensive. In particular with certain seasonal employment contracts, which only guarantee activity for part of the year. »
Shortage of staff
The passengers of the British company are not the only ones to face disruption due to a social movement. This is the case at Irish Ryanair, where two Spanish unions have also launched a cycle of cabin crew strikes which will last… until the beginning of January 2023, four days a week (Monday to Thursday ). This strike is in fact the resumption of a conflict which had begun last June, then which had been extended until the end of July… An agreement had been reached, but only with a minority union, the others rejecting it.
Despite everything, faced with a resumption of flights much faster than expected after the pandemic, low-cost airlines are taking advantage more than others of Europeans’ desire for holidays to climb up, or even exceed their level of activity before. crisis. This is especially the case for Ryanair, Wizz Air (Hungary) and Volotea (Spain).
Easyjet, even efficient, is more struggling, faced with a lack of staff which has led to cancellations of summer flights. «It has managed the shortage of pilots and cabin crew less well than others,” says a very good connoisseur of the sector.