Frankfurt airport’s ground crew is scheduled to resume a strike over pay this morning as workers await a labor court ruling on whether they can continue their protests longer than scheduled.
The Frankfurt Labor Court last night approved an application by their employer DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH, airport owner Fraport AG and Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Germany’s biggest airline, to stop a sympathy strike by control-tower staff. Fraport and Lufthansa have filed a separate injunction to halt the current ground staff strikes.
The further strikes were “disproportionate” and would not solely serve to support the other strikes, the court said in an e-mailed statement, adding that it would allow an appeal. Three spokesmen for the Gewerkschaft der Flugsicherung union, which represents the ground controllers, did not immediately respond to calls to their mobile phones after normal business hours.
The GdF union had called on about 100 members of tower crews to join the action from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. today to show “solidarity” in the dispute over pay and the outsourcing of employment contracts.
About 200 flights, or 16 percent of the scheduled total, were scrapped yesterday in the latest action by ground controllers slated to run until 5 a.m. on March 1, according to Fraport.
The labor court is due to hear this morning the second injunction application, in which Fraport and Lufthansa will seek to stop the GdF union from continuing the ground controllers’ action beyond 5 a.m. on March 1, when it’s slated to end.
Lufthansa, whose main hub is Frankfurt, is the party most affected by the dispute, with losses “significantly” in excess of 10 million euros ($13 million) so far, Stefan Lauer, a board member at the Cologne, Germany-based carrier, said yesterday.
Talks aimed at ending the dispute broke down Feb. 24 after Fraport offered terms similar to those agreed at Munich airport. That deal was worth less than one proposed before the start of mediation, according to the GdF group, which has said it will no longer give 24 hours’ notice of any further action.
The union has said it favors proposals from mediator Ole von Beust for a two-step monthly wage increase of between 200 euros and 1,600 euros. It also wants any outsourced jobs to move to a single company on a single contract.
Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) was ranked the third best airport in the world by the annual Airport Council International (ACI). It also received the Airport Service Quality Awards for 2011. CSIA was also rated as the second best in India, for airports handling 25-40 million passengers per annum (mmpa).
The survey was conducted across 180 airports in the world. G V Reddy, managing director of Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL), said the award showed improvement in service quality at the airport.
“This award is a reaffirmation of our vision to transform CSIA into one of the world’s best airports that consistently delight customers and be the pride of Mumbai. It is gratifying to note that we received this award last year in the 15-25 mppa category and again this year in the 25-40 mppa category,” Reddy said.
The survey, undertaken by ACI, was conducted with passenger feedback on fliers’ experiences from their arrival till departure. CSIA catered to 29.1 million passengers between April 2010 - March 2011, a MIAL spokesperson said.
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4:14 PM
Charles dickens
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