Chaos in the shifts and lack of personnel – Aviation Service employees are set to strike, along with the security staff who plan to strike on 17 July
By Marta Artico
25 June 2022
VENEZIA. Airport services ground personnel are set to strike. Another hot Saturday has been announced, full of inconveniences for the passengers, who are in the spotlight in this summer of resuming flights. Aviation Service has announced a strike from 10 AM to 2 PM today at Marco Polo Airport, where over the last few weeks tourists have found themselves facing lines for security checks and for boarding because of the lack of staff.
Obviously only some of the staff can participate, given the rules that regulate air transport and the minimum services that must be guaranteed, which are regulated at the national level by control bodies.
The protest was started by FIT CISL and involves various services, from check-in to baggage handling. The reasons for the strike of handling services have been the subject of meetings between the parties with the involvement of the Prefettura, but so far an accord has not been reached between the unions and SAVE. “The shifts are not appropriate”, explains Ivano Traverso, the Veneto regional coordinator of airport activities, “but there is also a lack of personnel, workloads that don’t allow working safely and problems related to the low pay”. Along with these there is also the problem of short contracts. “They are too short”, clarifies the union leader, “the company can even boast that it is hiring ten, twenty, a hundred people, but if those people are offered a contract with a duration of only one or two months and pay that runs from 700 to 1000 euro, who will accept it?”
There is more: “We must recall that we are not asked to work Monday to Friday from 9 to 5. In an airport we’re talking about shifts, holiday work, nights, and weekends”. There are different overlapping problems, among which is restaurants having difficulty finding food service staff – baristas, cooks and wait staff – and so can’t stay open during the established shifts. More specifically, they are unable “to guarantee adequate service to the passengers”.
The private security staff don’t intend to give up either, though they will hold off on the originally planned strike for 9 July. FISASCAT CISL explains: “the security commission blocked the date of 9 July, citing among its reasons the nearby dates on which other union organizations have declared a strike”. The union therefore released a new announcement for a strike at the airport on 17 July from 2 to 6 PM.
“We must continue to guarantee the right to strike for workers who are considered to be indispensable and irreplaceable when they have to perform their duties, and who are forgotten when it is time to renew the contract and acknowledge their professionalism. Our goal was and is that of continuing the state of agitation until we regain the contractual table and sign the national contract. Our determination will never let up”.
Source: La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre
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