While the Lufthansa ground staff wage dispute is heading towards arbitration, security staff at six German airports are on strike again today. Employers’ associations warn about the consequences of strikes for growth.
Due to further warning strikes by aviation security staff, passengers in Germany must also be prepared for restrictions today. The ver.di union called on its members to take part in warning strikes at the airports of Hanover, Dortmund, Weeze, Dresden, Leipzig/Halle and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden. Several thousand passengers are affected.
Strike in Hanover since Thursday evening
Late on Thursday evening, the first employees in Hanover went on strike. With the warning strikes, ver.di wants to increase the pressure on employers before the next round of negotiations on March 20th. Warning strikes by security staff at five German airports had already largely brought operations to a standstill on Thursday. According to estimates by the airport association ADV, more than 580 flight connections were canceled.
The airport association ADV is expecting a significantly lower number of canceled connections for this Friday. While no planes are supposed to take off all day in Dortmund and Weeze, the strike in Hanover is only supposed to take place from midnight to 12 p.m. Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport marked all six flights planned for Friday as canceled or rerouted. In Dresden, according to ver.di, the warning strike should begin at 4 a.m. and end at 12 p.m.; in Leipzig, work should stop from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Negotiations for around 25,000 employees
The collective bargaining concerns the wages and working conditions of around 25,000 employees of private security providers. On behalf of the Federal Police, they check passengers, staff and luggage at the entrances to the security area.
There have been five rounds of negotiations so far in the collective bargaining dispute. There was further movement in one of the other current collective bargaining disputes in air transport on Thursday evening: Ver.di and Lufthansa announced that they would aim for arbitration in the collective bargaining negotiations for ground staff. At the same time, ver.di still wants to prepare a strike vote to pave the way for “forced strikes”.
Debate about reforming the right to strike
Against the background of the current strikes in rail and air transport, the debate about reforming the right to strike continues. “The strikes in the critical infrastructure are not only annoying, they are also a brake on growth,” said the managing director of the Federal Association of Employers’ Associations, Steffen Kampeter, to the “Rheinische Post”.
The economic damage not only affects the companies directly affected, but also the entire economy.
Kampeter described the unions’ actions as “disproportionate” and called on the legislature to act. “We need clear industrial action law, especially for the railways and similar areas.”
Arbitration Procedure before the strike
The economist Veronika Grimm also expects the ver.di and GDL unions to give in to the current collective bargaining disputes at Bahn and Lufthansa. “The right to strike enjoys a high level of protection and that’s a good thing. But if the strikes increasingly put a strain on competitiveness, it may of course be that the legislature intervenes and adjusts the rules,” said Grimm in the “Rheinische Post”. For example, one could come up with the idea of requiring an arbitration procedure before a strike.
Similar demands are coming from the opposition: The legal policy spokesman for the Union faction, Günter Krings, is calling for a strike law with mandatory lead times for industrial disputes in critical infrastructure. Such a law “includes standards for proportionality and the necessary lead times for a strike in public services and critical infrastructure,” said the CDU politician to the Editorial Network Germany (RND). “This is the only way customers, who are now the biggest victims of the rail strikes, can take precautions in good time.”