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Iberia staff begin strike action

Originally published on businesstraveller.com 18/02/2013 - Filed under: Home » News »

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Iberia staff have begun the first of three separate five-day strikes over the carrier’s proposals to cut around 3,800 jobs.

The first strike is taking place from today (February 18) to Friday February 22, with further industrial action scheduled for later this month and March.

Iberia says that of the 70,000 passengers affected by the first strike period, around 60,000 or 85 per cent “have been booked on other flights”, with the remainder getting full refunds.

In a statement the carrier said:

“Under Iberia’s strike contingency plan, the airline has notified affected passengers about cancelled flights, and offered them alternative arrangements or refunds, either directly or through travel agencies, depending on where the tickets were purchased.

“Iberia has also made arrangements with its partners in the Oneworld alliance and another ten airlines to carry Iberia passengers as needed.”

A list of cancelled flights over the next five days can be found here.

In November last year Iberia’s parent company IAG revealed that the Spainish carrier was losing €1.7 million per day, with the airline's CEO Rafael Sánchez-Lozano admitting that the carrier is “in [a] fight for survival” (see online news November 9, 2012)

For more information visit iberia.com.

Report by Mark Caswell

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COMMENTS » 

VintageKrug - 18/02/2013 11:23

Iberia is massively overstaffed and inefficient.

Sadly, these strikes will simply cause further economic impact on an already beleagured economy, and do nothing to reduce the likelihood of necessary staff reductions. In fact, they further impact profitability and make even more redundancies necessary, hitting Iberia's union members even harder.

IAG has demonstrated its experience and effectiveness in managing challenging industrial relations situations with recent events at BA, and Iberia is no different.

It's a great shame that the union rejected invitations to engage on cost reduction and the reshaping of the airline to deliver profitability. This would have delivered a stable foundation for job stability the potential for job creation in the future, with the union serving the interests of its membership.

As ever, all we end up with from the Union is political point scoring and anti-capitalist confrontation, which actually harms the very membership this doomed strike purports to protect.

As someone once said, it's all just a little bit of history repeating. And we already know how the story will end.

Lots of upside for IAG.L once this is resolved, though. Share price continues to rally, up around 50% since August.

BBFLYER - 18/02/2013 14:58

Once again Iberia on strike. I will never choose Iberia by choice :(

VintageKrug - 18/02/2013 17:26

The strikes shouldn't last for long; 60% of services will operate this week and 60,000 of the 70,000 flying today have been re-accommodated onto other airlines.

Once the necessary reforms have taken place, and Iberia's management asserts its right to acttually manage the airline, the likelihood of strikes will reduce significantly.

Iberia lost 850 million euros between 2008 and September of last year, including 262 million in the first nine months of 2012. That's not a sustainable situation, and these tough but necessary workforce changes will ensure future stability for employees, as well as improved certainty for customers.

It will, nonetheless, be a rocky few months...

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