Flights to and from Germany have been grounded as airport workers staged a nationwide strike, demanding a wage increase.
The demonstration, tagged a ‘warning strike’, centres on pay disputes involving airport security workers and a broader disagreement over government employee wages.
Following Monday’s strike, passengers have been advised to avoid travelling to major airports, including Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin, due to severe disruptions in operations.
Frankfurt, Germany’s busiest airport, said passengers would be unable to board flights, and transfers would “almost certainly” be affected.
Many of Frankfurt Airport’s 1,770 scheduled flights have already been cancelled, while the majority of Munich’s 820 flights are expected to be cancelled.
The industrial action, led by the trade union Verdi, began unexpectedly yesterday at Hamburg Airport before expanding to a nationwide strike.
During the movement, Verdi demanded an 8% pay rise, or at least €350 more per month, for all workers, as well as three extra days of holiday, plus one additional day for union members.
Aside from airport workers, Verdi also called for strikes in waste collection across several German cities, including Berlin, Essen, and Kiel, where bins have gone unemptied since last week.
Reacting to the movement, Katja Bromm, spokeswoman for Hamburg Airport, where all 143 departures scheduled on Monday have already been cancelled, said Verdi was “dishonourable” to call a strike without notice at the start of the holiday season.
She said Sunday’s walkouts were “excessive and unfair to tens of thousands of travellers who have nothing to do with the disputes.”
In response, a spokesman for Verdi accepted that the strike would affect many but said the travel disruption was necessary to extract a better pay offer.
“The workers are aware that disruptions do happen, and they are uncomfortable with that, but in any case, it is the employer that caused these strikes because they haven’t put a negotiable offer on the table.”
Lars Stubbe, the union’s Hamburg representative, explained that while airport wages range above minimum wage, from €13-€25 per hour, workers in different roles, particularly security staff, received less annual leave than others.
“There have been two rounds of negotiations in which the employers have not yet offered one penny,” he stated.
“It is quite usual that we don’t get any offers in the first round, but now even in the second round, the employers have basically said, ‘No, we’re not going to give you an offer because we don’t have any money’.”
