Verdi is expanding its warning strikes in the ongoing wage negotiations. In the coming days, employees at airports are also to go on strike. The airports in Munich, Frankfurt and Hamburg then canceled all regular take-offs and landings planned for Friday. The journey to the security conference is not affected.
After the strike announced by the Verdi union, several German airports will cease regular passenger operations on Friday. The background is the collective bargaining conflict in the public service of the federal and local governments. Munich Airport announced this itself. The airports in Frankfurt – after all, the largest German airport – and Hamburg announced that there would be no regular flight operations. A Lufthansa spokesman had previously confirmed this to “Stern”. This is also being considered for the airport in Stuttgart. However, emergency operations are planned at the airports in Berlin and Cologne/Bonn.
“Due to the strike, Flughafen München GmbH has applied to the Bavarian State Ministry for Housing, Construction and Transport, the supreme aviation supervisory authority, to exempt the airport from the obligation to operate commercial air traffic for this day,” said a statement from the airport. The request was granted. There will be no passenger flights from midnight on Friday morning until 1 a.m. on Saturday night. Special flights such as relief flights and flights for medical, technical and other emergencies as well as flights for the Munich Security Conference are excluded.
More than 700 take-offs and landings are planned for Friday in the Bavarian capital, a spokesman for Germany’s second-biggest airport said. Verdi had previously called for all-day warning strikes at several German airports. A joint strike by public sector employees, aviation security and ground handling services is planned in Munich, as Verdi Bayern announced.
Frankfurt Airport states on its website that there will be “massive disruptions all day long” due to the strike. Regular airport operations cannot be guaranteed, it is said. Passengers will not be able to catch their flights and should refrain from traveling to the airport.
Hamburg Airport announced online that there would be no regular flight operations on Friday. Passengers are asked to liaise with their airlines and not come to the airport. Stuttgart Airport warns that there could be “impairments and flight cancellations”.
In the current bargaining round, the Verdi services union and the civil servants’ association are calling for an increase in income of 10.5 percent, but at least 500 euros more. Municipal employers reject this as economically unmanageable. The new collective agreement for around 2.5 million employees is to have a term of twelve months. The second round of negotiations is scheduled for February 22nd and 23rd in Potsdam.
Meanwhile, employees in several federal states have stopped working today. To build up pressure, employees went on warning strikes in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, among other places. In North Rhine-Westphalia, it was primarily local government employees who went on strike. The warning strikes affected the city administrations in Oberhausen, Essen and Duisburg. Work stoppages were also planned for the administrations in Bochum, Remscheid and Solingen. In addition, day care centers, municipal swimming pools, depots and green space offices were affected by the walkout.
Many areas of public service were also affected by strikes in Ludwigshafen and Kaiserslautern. A Verdi spokesman said that some hospitals and energy suppliers were only operated with an emergency service. In Ludwigshafen, all daycare centers were also closed.
Public sector employees also took part in the warning strikes in Saxony-Anhalt. In Halle and the surrounding area, employees in daycare centers, administrations and savings banks stopped working.
