The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has asked airlines to cancel Thursday all their flights departing from or arriving at the airports of Beauvais, Brest and Carcassonne due to a strike by air traffic controllers. On Wednesday, the DGAC had called for the abolition of half of the flights at Beauvais (Oise) airport alone for Thursday, but it extended these measures “given the monitoring of the movement observed in the air navigation organizations of Beauvais, Brest and Carcassonne,” she said in a statement.
The administration justified the measure by “a national strike notice […] filed by a trade union representative of air traffic controllers”. The union in question, the Usac-CGT, is protesting against the social protocol being negotiated with the DGAC, which according to it “confirms a desire to disrupt the organization of work of people in civil aviation, while implementing degradation of the service rendered”.
A “questioning of the right to strike”
This is a text “as it stands, unacceptable”, said Usac-CGT in a press release. This union had already been at the forefront of the protest movement against the pension reform, which had caused cascading flight cancellations and delays between March and May.
The Usac-CGT also denounced the vote on June 15 in the Senate of a bill aimed at better organizing air traffic in the event of a strike. It is a “questioning of the right to strike” and warned that “the promulgation of this law would constitute an extraordinary setback of this constitutional right” according to the organization.
Beaune in favor of legislative change
Currently, unions in air traffic control must file any strike notice five days before a movement, but strikers do not have to declare their individual participation, unlike other employees in the sector. They will have to do so from now on under this bill. This reform must now be examined by the National Assembly.
The Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, said he was in favor of such a change in the law after a surprise work stoppage on February 11 by air traffic controllers, in the absence of a call for a strike, which had led the DGAC to have one out of two flights at Paris-Orly canceled in disaster. The DGAC stressed that Thursday’s notice “concerns many sites but not the main French airports or the five en-route control centers” which manage the trajectories of aircraft flying over the territory.