Staff at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris announced a strike on Thursday this week, which forced the airport to cancel 25% of the scheduled flights. The employees stopped working between 7am and 2pm to protest against low wages.
After months of chaos at the airport with passengers having to face lengthy queues and last-minute cancellations, the airport decided to finally cancel in advance 100 flights to “limit traffic disruption”.
The unionised workers at Charles de Gaulle say that they are not paid enough to deal with the sudden rise in passenger numbers and consequently workload. Adding to this the rapid rise in the cost of living, the unions ask for a 300 euro raise to cover their effort and expenses. De Romanet promises to “fight like a lion” to improve conditions at French airports and to ease the “unbearable” conditions passengers face.
Despite the resumption of traffic and profits, our work is not paid at its fair value… everything increases, except our pay. The chaos suffered for several weeks by employees working in France and Europe is intolerable.
An inter-union coalition in France told Euronews
Earlier this year, the chief executive of the Aéroport de Paris approximated that between the Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris the labour shortage came up to 4,000 workers. The most needed personnel are for maintenance technicians, baggage handlers and border police inspectors for supervising the security checks. At the moment, the airports are still lacking between 300 and 500 staff members from the April estimate.
Charles de Gaulle is not alone in this situation. The recovery of air traffic after the 2 pandemic years found airports and airlines underprepared for the sudden high influx of passengers. During the pandemic, around 200,000 aviation workers were made redundant in Europe but now staff shortages and disagreements on fair wages have been causing chaos all over the continent. Dublin, Amsterdam and Brussels are among the most recent airports facing serious disruptions.
