The employees of the ground handling companies LGS and Swissport went on a spontaneous two-hour strike this morning at Larnaca airport, after 156 people were served with redundancy letters.
As Giorgos Iulianos, District Secretary of PEO Larnaca, reported to KYPE, the workers held a spontaneous work stop from 10 am to 12 noon, while the decision was made after a meeting of the workers in the two companies “after the development that it came about through the open process, which took place in March for the inclusion of new companies in the field of ground handling”.
He added that “while there is a clear provision in the relevant decree, according to which, when a volume of work is moved from one company to another, the personnel will also be moved, however at the moment we have 111 redundancies at LGS and 45 at Swissport. None of the redundant staff from both companies, who lost their jobs when airlines moved to the third provider, moved to this particular company”.
As Mr. Iulianos said “while we had assurances from the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works in 3-4 meetings we had with him, that there will be no redundancies but there will be full employment of the employees, today we have 150-160 redundancies in front of us in both companies”.
He also stated that “we workers have nothing else to do but to claim our jobs and that is what we are doing today”.
“Our intention is not to create any problem and inconvenience the passenger public” he said and added that “for this very reason, during the two-hour spontaneous work stoppage, there was a security team, as provided for by the regulations in order to serve the emergency and serious incidents that may arise”.
According to Mr. Iulianos, “as many flights were ready to depart despite the fact that the strike had started, we made sure to serve them to go to their destinations”.
In response to a related question, he stated that “at Pafos airport, the employees are holding a meeting from noon in order to be informed and decide on their own steps.” meeting with the Ministry of Transport to discuss all the issues that have arisen after the new environment that has formed in the airports”.
