REPRESENTATIVES of Spanish airline Iberia will meet with some of Spain’s biggest unions on Thursday in a last-ditch attempt to end a planned Jan. 5-8 strike.
The stoppage coincides with the Kings Day national holiday and will be a time when many thousands of Spaniards will travel by air.
The Sima mediation and arbitration service has convened the two sides in the ongoing industrial conflict, according to a report in Spanish daily La Vanguardia. Sima is bringing together the CCOO and UGT unions, which originally called the strike, as well as the USO union, which more recently joined the industrial action, for joint talks with Iberia.
Ground staff are guilty of activities such as baggage check-in, so commercial action may have a primary effect only on travel with Iberia, or even on any flights of other airlines operated through the former national carrier, such as British Airways, which is a component of the same parent group, IAG.
The dispute began in September when Iberia lost its licenses to provide on-site assistance services at eight Spanish airports, including Barcelona, Malaga, Alicante and Gran Canaria.
According to the terms of their collective bargaining agreements, those Iberia lands will have to be transferred to the corporations that have received the licenses.
These workers, however, fear wasting their existing wages and other routine situations and are asking Iberia to hotel “autohandling”, that is, to use an internal company to offer these services.
Iberia considers this option to be economically viable.
Strikes had also been announced for the period from 29 to 31 December, but on 21 December the unions announced that they were postponing those days on the grounds that negotiations between the two parties were progressing and that the Spanish government was playing a mediating role.
But just days after the unions called off strikes, the UGT and CCOO announced that staff would block their teams across the country from 5 to 8 January. The USO then called for a strike on the same days.
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