The first day of the easyJet cabin crew strike resulted in 31 flights being cancelled at various Spanish airports, 62 including outbound and return flights, with more cancellations expected on Thursday and Friday.
The first day of three-day stoppage by Spain-based cabin crew for the low-cost carrier has led to considerable travel disruption for passengers, despite the fact that the country’s Transport Ministry ruled that easyJet should provide minimum services of between 80 and 90 during the strike.
Twelve flights were cancelled from Palma de Mallorca airport, including connections to Geneva, Basel, Milan, London, Montpellier, Manchester, Lille, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Bristol, Belfast and Berlin.
Nine easyJet flights didn’t take off from Barcelona Airport either, those to Basel, London, Berlin, Nice, Manchester, Naples, Lisbon, Nice, and Geneva.
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It was a similar situation at Malaga Airport, where seven scheduled flights to Geneva, Manchester, Zurich, Leeds, Bristol, Rabat, and Nice were grounded.
And in Alicante, three flights to Glasgow, Prague, and Belfast were also cancelled.
In addition, there were 28 flights easyJet had cancelled before the start of the three-day strike, which is currently scheduled to last until Friday June 27th.
However, USO – the workers’ union which represents easyJet’s Spain-based cabin crew and were responsible for calling the strikes – has threatened the budget carrier’s management with an indefinite strike if it does not come to the negotiating table.
USO reported that participation by easyJet staff on the first strike day was 85 percent, of the 657 cabin crew members that were called to join the stoppage.
Another strike in August hasn’t been ruled either.
USO’s main demand is to equate the salaries of easyJet cabin crew in Spain with those at the other European bases where the company operates.
“Spanish flight attendants at easyJet earn the lowest salaries in all of Europe,” said Pier Luigi Copello, USO’s general secretary at easyJet.
“While our base salary is €14,067 per year, our European colleagues earn from 29 percent more in Portugal to over 200 percent more in Switzerland.
“Therefore, we demand equal pay with other European bases. We’re not asking for privileges, we’re asking for what’s fair.”
Copello went on to explain that 75 percent of easyJet’s Spanish workforce are on temporary contracts and work only nine months a year with a base salary of €10,500, adding that Spain is the only country in the airline’s network with “these precarious contractual arrangements”.
Furthermore, its bases are in four Spanish cities with a high cost of living – Barcelona, Alicante, Málaga, and Palma de Mallorca.
“This situation has led some crew members to live in caravans due to their inability to access decent housing,” USO notes.
The union has already criticised easyJet’s management for employing “unacceptable methods to neutralise our right to strike” as well as Spain’s Ministry of Transport for setting a minimum service figure that USO considers “abusive” and which “not only limits but directly denies the right to strike.”
