Iberia airline pilots are planning to strike every Friday and Monday from the 9th of April, in protest at the creation of Iberia Express low-cost affiliation, which began operating on the 25th of March.

This series of 30 strike actions was set up to avoid damaging Semana Santa air traffic but will certainly disrupt the May-Day bank holiday and the first part of summer.

Sepla, which is the union that represents pilots from Iberia, believes that this low-cost company is a back-door move to transfer 30% of flights to this sub-company, thus contravening present labour accords between Iberia and Sepla. The union believes that around 6,000 jobs could be lost because of it.

This will not be the first strike action over this dispute, as Sepla have called a dozen one-day hits since December, causing a 36m-euro loss to the company. Sepla heavily criticizes the airline for compromising – Sepla put an offer on the table that would have meant that the pilots for the new subsidiary, low-cost company, would take its pilots from the Iberia pool, but this was rejected by the company. In fact, all the 500 workers that have been hired by Iberia Express came from external sources, precisely because it would leave the company unshackled from the parent company’s labour convent.

Iberia, on the other hand, condemns the strike action as ‘irresponsible and intransigent. ‘Iberia bosses consider that the creation of a low-cost subsidiary airline is a decision that only concerns the company. Furthermore, the company considers that this move was crucial to its being able to compete on short and medium-range routes.’

(News: Spain)