Passenger air traffic at Berlin’s international airport came to a standstill on Wednesday after ground staff went on a one-day strike over an ongoing pay dispute.<\/p>\n
Around 445 departures and arrivals, involving a total of 57,000 passengers, were suspended due to the industrial action that began in the early morning, the trade union Verdi said.<\/p>\n
Operations are to remain affected until midnight (2300 GMT).<\/p>\n
Terminals were largely empty on Wednesday after airlines had rebooked affected passengers onto other flights and offered alternative travel options, a spokeswoman for the operator said.<\/p>\n
Verdi, one of Europe’s biggest trade unions, is negotiating with the operator of Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, FBB, seeking a salary increase of 6% or at least \u20ac250 ($287) for its 2,000 employees under a new collective agreement set to run for 12 months.<\/p>\n
The union has also been pushing for an additional day off for union members.<\/p>\n
During the second round of talks last week, employer representatives presented an initial offer that Verdi said did not go far enough.<\/p>\n
FBB head Aletta von Massenbach has called the industrial action disproportionate “especially in the already very tense situation due to the war in Iran.”<\/p>\n
US and Israeli attacks on Iran launched on February 28 and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes have disrupted air traffic in The Gulf region, a major transit hub for global flights.<\/p>\n
She expressed confidence that an agreement would be reached at the next round of negotiations scheduled for March 25.<\/p>\n
The 2,000 workers called on to strike do not include ground handling services or security, which are carried out by external service providers.<\/p>\n
However, it was considered impossible to maintain flight operations as firefighters, air-traffic control and terminal management workers joined the industrial action.<\/p>\n
Operations are expected to return to normal on Thursday, with the operator anticipating an increase in passenger numbers due to rebookings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Passenger air traffic at Berlin’s international airport came to a standstill on Wednesday after ground staff went on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,1761,24265,190,13011,1764,20633],"class_list":{"0":"post-42787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-berlin-brandenburg-airport","10":"tag-departures-and-arrivals","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-industrial-action","13":"tag-international-airport","14":"tag-trade-union"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116250500407950106","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}