The main union of pilots in the country, Sepla, will maintain the call for new strike days at Air Europa between June 19 and July 2 at all bases and work centers in Spain. The pilots affirm that the company has breached the preliminary agreement reached on June 8 and has not responded to their demands for wages and working conditions.
The company, according to the complaint, distanced itself from the pact a day later by presenting a “radically different” document, a proposal in which Air Europa, they assert, intends to “make the collective cheaper by impoverishing the rights and working conditions of the new pilots that enter the airline”. In this sense, they maintain that the company intends to equate salaries to those of low-cost airlines.
The new strike days, which will take place between June 19 and July 2, in addition to the eight days called between May 22 and June 2, in which 114 flights were cancelled, and a first batch at the beginning of May that ended with 68 suppressed operations.
The Air Europa labor conflict comes after British Airways and Iberia, both airlines of the Anglo-Spanish group International Airlines Group (IAG), agreed in February to buy the remaining 80% of Air Europa that they did not already own from the Spanish Globalia for 400 million euros. euro. However, the agreement is still pending the approval of the regulatory bodies in Brussels.
In 2021, a first attempt to buy the airline failed after being rejected by regulators, due to concerns about the lack of competition on routes to Latin America. The airline, which was rescued by the Spanish State in 2020 with a loan of 475 million euros, will maintain its brand but will be managed by Iberia.
