The unions CC.OO., UGT and USO maintain the strike in Iberia scheduled for January 5, 6, 7 and 8 to protest the handling situation (ground assistance service). The airline and the union organizations met this Thursday summoned by the Interconfederal Mediation and Arbitration Service (SIMA), a meeting that was settled without an agreement, so the call for protests throughout the airline continues.
The handling sector has been up in arms since Iberia lost the licenses to provide this service at eight of Aena's main airports, such as El Prat, Palma de Mallorca and Malaga. The competition for the airport manager, with a business volume estimated at 5,000 million euros for an operating period of seven years, awarded most of the licenses for the main airports to Groundforce (Globalia), Aviapartner and Menzies, while Iberia It only maintains the Barajas one among those with the highest traffic. The focus of the conflict is that Iberia's handling workers do not want to be subrogated to the new contractors and ask the company to offer autohandling to the airlines of its group, IAG, such as Vueling or British Airways, in addition to Iberia itself. . The license change process must be carried out during 2024.
However, the company has already ruled out the autohandling option. It argues that it is not profitable and would compromise its accounts, which is why it has proposed the creation of a joint venture with one of the successful bidders to maintain a portion of the workers it currently has under its umbrella.
The unions already announced strikes in December, one of them coinciding with the end of the year, but in the end they did not call them hoping to reach an agreement with the company. Now the dialogue is broken and the protests coincide with one of the weekends with the highest passenger traffic at the airports and the end of the Christmas school holidays.
Iberia has stated that it remains open to continuing dialogue, but makes it a precondition that the unions call off the strike. Something that, at the moment, they do not claim to be willing to do. In total, some 4,000 Iberia workers would be affected by the subrogations, most of whom at Barcelona airport.
