Brussels Airport, Brussels Airlines and TUI fly have issued an unprecedented and strongly-worded press release criticising labour unions for the personal, economic and reputational repercussions of repeated strike action on customers, aviation and Belgium as a country.
The ongoing national industrial action is “systematically disrupting air traffic”, the statement says, impacting the airport “every single month.” As a result, a total of 180,000 passengers have been affected at Brussels Airport alone.
“Take a different approach”
The repeated strikes are “directed against the policies of and measures of the federal government”, the statement notes, and yet they are having “a disproportionate impact on tens of thousands of passengers, airlines staff, and the aviation sector as a whole,”. The airport, national flag carrier and TUI subsidiary are therefore appealing to unions to take “a different approach, one that does not hit passengers on 25 June.”
The airport insists that it respects the right to strike but nonetheless expresses “regret” for the human consequences of the union’s decisions. Each strike has an “enormous impact on passengers and the entire industry,” the press release points out, noting that on each of the four occasions in the last four months that unions have taken action, “tens of thousands of people” have been affected by cancelled flights.
“Profound impact”
It’s not only the volume of people affected that is a cause for a rethink but also the way each cancellation has “a profound impact on every passenger,” the three companies say. They underline that whether people are travelling “for vacation, to visit family, for work, or any other reason” their plans “often involve hotel bookings, event reservations, and other arrangements. These 180,000 people have suffered significant inconvenience and financial consequences due to the strikes.”
As well as the personal effect of strikes on passengers, there are commercial, industrial, and national consequences, the statement says, denouncing the way the “repeated disruptions also damage the reputation of the aviation industry, of our country and the airline companies. Despite their maximum efforts to provide solutions for their travellers, airlines are facing high costs and a significant additional workload.”
Arnaud Feist, CEO of Brussels Airport, estimates the strikes “have already cost the Belgian economy 100 million euros”, deploring their knock-on effect on “a whole chain” “from the individual passenger to the airlines, from the export companies to the cargo processing, from the travel agencies to the Belgian hotels.” He ended his statement simply, by describing the situation as “no longer tenable.”
The joint call urges unions to take “alternative actions” and “don’t let our passengers down again,” insisting on fairer treatment for the travelling public as well as “working employees who lose wages” every time a strike occurs. “There are other ways to take action and engage in dialogue, without completely halting air traffic,” the statement contends.
Warning that jobs could be at risk
After four days of disruption already in one year, including during French-speaking schools’ spring holidays, the next scheduled strike date is “particularly sensitive”, it says, since it falls just before the summer holidays in Flanders when nearly 75,000 travellers are expected at the airport. These passengers are now “living in uncertainty due to the announced national union action.”
Despite the airport and airlines’ best efforts to keep customers informed and minimise disruption, the current pattern of industrial action is “not sustainable for a sector that is the country’s second-largest economic engine” the statement warns, with an ominous reference to the 64,000 direct and indirect jobs that could be put in jeopardy unless unions change their course.
International trade union (ETUI) data, reported by Brussels Times, show that Belgium “ranks third in Europe in terms of the number of strike days for the period 2010-2019. Only Cyprus and France score higher, with the caveat that data are not available for all countries.”
The two major Belgian labour unions were contacted for comment, but had not replied at the time of writing.
