Belgian cabin crew that work for the Irish airline Ryanair are to strike during the New Year weekend and from 6 to 8 January. The announcement that Ryanair’s stewards and stewardesses will down tools during the last two weekends of the Christmas and New Year vacation was made by the Christian trade union ACV Puls. Both the New Year weekend and the last weekend of the two-week school holidays are busy times Ryanair. As a result of the industrial action around half of all flights that were due to take off from Charleroi Airport (Hainaut Province) will stay on the ground.
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Ryanair’s Belgian cabin crew to strike during the last two weekends of the Christmas holidays
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Belgian Staff at Ryanair are unhappy because they say that the Irish airline refuses to respect Belgium’s minimum wage legislation. It won’t be the first time that staff at Ryanair will have taken strike action. During the summer they downed tools. Since then, there have been negotiations. However, they have reached something of an impasse during the past few months.
A month ago, the unions sent an open letter to the Federal Government stating that Ryanair “continues to flout the law without anyone taking action”. The unions had threatened industrial action if nothing changed before the end of this. Hans Elsen of ACV Puls told VRT News that “Unfortunately the situation has got worse” and a strike is unavoidable.
Around 15 Ryanair planes are based at Charleroi Airport. These planes are staffed with Belgian cabin crew and will most probably remain on the ground during the two weekends of the strike. If this is the case around half of all Ryanair’s flights to and from Charleroi will be cancelled. As Ryanair has no planes stationed at Brussels Airport in Zaventem (Flemish Brabant) the strikes will have no impact on the airline’s flights there.