Warning strikes began at Berlin and Hamburg airports on Monday morning. At the capital's BER airport, numerous employees in the aviation security sector, in passenger control and personnel and goods control stopped work from 3.30 a.m., as Verdi union secretary Enrico Rümker confirmed to the German Press Agency. Shortly after the warning strike was announced, the airport announced that no passenger flights would take off on Monday.
It is not only in the large hall of Terminal 1 that it will remain unusually quiet. Some planned landings are also cancelled. Verdi has called on workers to stop work by midnight. The union wants to increase the pressure on employers, with whom it negotiates bonuses for unfavorable working hours, such as weekends, and rules on overtime pay.
Deletions and delays
Due to a Verdi warning strike announced at short notice, there were also flight cancellations in Hamburg. Already 31 of 160 departures had been canceled, Hamburg Airport announced in the early morning. The employees of the handling service provider Aviation Handling Services Hamburg GmbH AHS, who are responsible for check-in and boarding, among other things, have called for a warning strike. There could be further cancellations and significant delays, the airport said. Arrivals are expected to proceed as planned.
The Association of German Commercial Airports criticized the warning strikes at the service providers. "Once again, the airports are the main victims, although they are not involved in the negotiations and are not a party to the collective bargaining agreement." Because unions and companies cannot reach an agreement, tens of thousands of passengers could not be checked and hundreds of flights were cancelled.
The action at the capital's airport joins a long list of strikes, especially in traffic, in recent weeks. Most recently, airports were on strike on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and the railway and transport union also paralyzed rail traffic nationwide for hours on Friday.
BER itself is on strike for the third time this year, and on other days passengers at BER were indirectly affected by work stoppages at other airports. During the strike in mid-March, all departures of passenger flights were cancelled - as is now the case - and no aircraft was able to land at BER during the warning strike at the end of January.
"We once again urge the BDLS (Federal Association of Aviation Security Companies) to submit a negotiable offer on April 27 and 28 and not to continue playing for time, otherwise there is a threat of further strikes in air traffic in May and Pentecost," said Wolfgang Pieper of the Verdi trade union on Saturday about the ongoing wage dispute.