holidays at risk for a million people – Corriere.it

holidays at risk for a million people - Corriere.it

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The summer holidays of tens of thousands of British are at risk of being blown up by the eight-day strike by the ground staff of the main handling companies at Gatwick, London’s second airport and one of the busiest in Europe. About 1,000 employees — including those who sort bags and check in travelers — will cross arms four days from July 28 to August 1 and another four days from August 4 to 8. Gatwick , for the United Kingdom, the airport par excellence used to go on holiday in the south of the continent.

The companies involved

Given the scale of the protest, delays and cancellations of flights will be inevitable at Gatwick, says Unite, the union that organizes the strike, in a statement. The 950 ground employees work for four private companies Asc, Menzies Aviation, Ggs and DHL Services and provide services for companies such as easyJet, British Airways, Tui, Wizz Air, Ryanair. The management company of the London airport makes it known that it is working on a plan to minimize the inconvenience.

14 euros per hour

At the center of the dispute is the wage adjustment: the majority of employees – denounces the British union – are paid less than 12 pounds (14 euros, ed) per hour despite performing highly demanding and safety-critical functions. During the pandemic, many companies at Gatwick Airport have carried out large-scale redundancies and cut the wages and conditions of their remaining staff, Unite reports.

The impact

It remains to be understood what the impact will be: every day at Gatwick there are about 850 take-offs and landings according to the latest data provided by Eurocontrol. If an agreement in extremis is not found and if the plans to reduce the inconvenience do not work, there are potentially around 7,000 flights at risk and over one million passengers involved. To these should be added the 1,700 flights canceled by easyJet in recent days precisely due to operational problems at Gatwick.

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