The third and final day of cabin crew strikes in Spain has resulted in 80 cancelled flights on Friday, although the union representing the low-cost carrier’s flight attendants has warned there could be more stoppages if a deal isn’t reached.
As of 10am on Friday, the third day of the strike at easyJet, the airline has cancelled 80 flights across its four Spanish bases: Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona, Alicante and Málaga.
The 40 cancelled flight routes – 80 total as they include roundtrips – are as follows:
17 in Palma de Mallorca : Geneva (two), Basel (three), Naples, Berlin, Bordeaux, Zurich, Nice, London Gatwick (two), Palermo, Nantes, Toulouse, Leeds Bradford and Paris Charles de Gaulle
11 in Málaga: Geneva (two), London Gatwick (two), Basel, Zurich, Bristol (two), Marrakech, Manchester and Nantes
4 in Alicante : Bristol, Basel, Southend and Lyon
8 in Barcelona : Berlin, Basel, Strasbourg, Naples, Geneva (two), Lisbon and Nice
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The cabin crew protest began on Wednesday with the intention of ending today (Friday June 27th), although if there is no agreement, organisers have not ruled out an indefinite strike in August.
The previous two days of strikes have resulted in 124 cancelled flights, 62 on each day. Therefore, the total number of grounded flights over the three days numbers 204.
Called by Spanish workers’ union USO, the purpose of the stoppage is to demand improved pay for easyJet’s Spain-based cabin crew, equalling their wages to that of their counterparts across other European countries where the budget airlines has bases.
However, the airline’s management maintains that “it is not possible to compare working conditions between different countries,” since its staff are governed by local contracts.
Pier Luigi Copello, the general secretary of USO at easyJet Spain, explained that the workforce is demanding fair and equitable working conditions, “in line with the European standards that easyJet maintains in other countries, given the exorbitant increase in the cost of living in Spain”, especially in cities such as Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona and Alicante.
According to Copello, easyJet flight attendants’ salaries in Spain get paid around the minimum wage.
