Swissport wildcat strike at Brussels Airport - 22/08/2017

[DeltaWiskey]

My opinion is that you, as an employee, don't do wildcat strikes. If you are not happy with the working conditions, and all negotiation options are exhausted (including regular strikes), you are always free to resign and find a job with better/other conditions.
If you don't find a better job, there is probably very little reason to strike in the first place.

[nordikcam]

My opinion is that you, as an employee, don't do wildcat strikes. If you are not happy with the working conditions, and all negotiation options are exhausted (including regular strikes), you are always free to resign and find a job with better/other conditions.
If you don't find a better job, there is probably very little reason to strike in the first place.

+1

[lumumba]

Not true. If the employer ignores a commitment you can simply go to a judge and demand the commitment is met. It seems more like the SwissPort employees just liked to take a day off.

This takes time it is another solution but I'm not in the company so I don't have details but I repeat nobody goes on wild strike if not necessary.

If it takes time you wait, there is no Excuse for illegal procedures. In the uk or ireland, if you strike illegaly, you get fired for breach of contract ... end of story

It's also illegal not to follow your commitments to your employees!

But I repeat I don't have much internal information I have no details but it's not inhuman to do a wild strike.

[lumumba]

My opinion is that you, as an employee, don't do wildcat strikes. If you are not happy with the working conditions, and all negotiation options are exhausted (including regular strikes), you are always free to resign and find a job with better/other conditions.
If you don't find a better job, there is probably very little reason to strike in the first place.

+1

That's easy speaking not everybody can do that because they are economically weak what you are saying is disgusting.....

[jan_olieslagers]

N O _ _ _ P O L I T I C S _ _ _ P L E A S E

[Passenger]

It's also illegal not to follow your commitments to your employees!

We have labour courts for such matters. Actually, there was no commitment for 2017. The bonus was paid from 2013-2016, but that's no commitment for 2017. If it was, I'm quite sure the unions would have demanded it on paper.

No sir: this is a wildcat strike to get something that should have been put on table during the normal, annual negociations.

[PttU]

Problem with strikes (not only this from Swissport) is they happen too often. If a union or a group of employees is unhappy, a strike has become the default action. Why not putting stickers on the bags of the passengers with the message you're wanting to spread? Or do something else, something original.

[lumumba]

It's also illegal not to follow your commitments to your employees!

We have labour courts for such matters. Actually, there was no commitment for 2017. The bonus was paid from 2013-2016, but that's no commitment for 2017. If it was, I'm quite sure the unions would have demanded it on paper.

No sir: this is a wildcat strike to get something that should have been put on table during the normal, annual negociations.

Like I said before I don't have enough inside information to take a position.
But I'm sure that if they go on wild strike it's that they now there is no other way to negotiate.
Anyway I support them.

For me it's more difficult to support the strike from the pilots because they have big salaries it's not the case here...

[luchtzak]

The Swissport employees have rejected the proposal of the management.

https://www.aviation24.be/airports/brussel ... s-airport/

[sn26567]

There are valid arguments on both sides. But also mistakes on both sides. Swissport management has already been pointed out for lack of flexibility, and trade unions for going illegally on a wildcat strike. This could and should be resolved by sitting around a table before going on strike and giving at least a week's notice before the strike starts: that gives enough time to cool tempers and come to a solution and if not, it gives passengers (who are, as usual, taken hostages) the opportunity to look after alternative travel plans.

But both sides should think about the serious consequences for the Belgian travel industry as a whole: they are cutting the branch on which they are sitting and Swissport, as well as the workers, could lose their business and their jobs. Capito?

[luchtzak]

Apparently they are back at work.

[luchtzak]

And now ... the backlog ...

[sean1982]

And now ... the backlog ...

Hope the wildcat strikers ALL need to work overtime to clear it

[convair]

And now ... the backlog ...

Hope the wildcat strikers ALL need to work overtime to clear it

I can imagine the care with which all these bags will be handled.

[luchtzak]

And now ... the backlog ...

Hope the wildcat strikers ALL need to work overtime to clear it

I can imagine the care with which all these bags will be handled.

To my regret the picture I embedded from a Romanian website is an outdated one. But it's exemplary

[teddybAIR]

Why not putting stickers on the bags of the passengers with the message you're wanting to spread? Or do something else, something original.

Uhm...probably because that - although cute and cheesy - would have zero impact on your working conditions or salary in the foreseeable future? Let's face the simple fact: they started a strike in the morning and a few hours later management was in negotiations with the employees. Unfortunately, management of some companies only responds when financially impacted...

[RoMax]

And nobody there cares about the often ruined holidays, weddings, special occasions, etc for which their checked luggage was essential. Even if the baggage is delayed for only 1 or 2 days, in many cases that's too late and you have people traveling around for weeks: good luck for them getting their baggage back at all during their holiday. What about people with essential medicines that often cost hundreds of euros to get or even not possible at all. Etc. Etc. Etc I'm not making things up now, I'm talking about panicking and outrageous people as we speak, now. Not just a few, thousands of them.

And the attempts from certain Swissport employees to boycot work by airline and airport staff as they don't accept "attempts to break the impact of the strike" ...let me not even start about that.

Zero respect for that, zero.

[sn26567]

I guess Brussels Airlines is the airline most affected by that strike. I heard that they rerouted their transit passengers through other Star Alliance hubs, which means other Star airlines, to minimise inconvenience. Chapeau!

[Inquirer]

interesting analysis of the dire situation in which handlers at BRU are stuck:

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2017/08/23 ... s-airport/

Basically, the opinion is that although workers are somewhat 'strike-happy' during certain periods of the year, they do have a valid point in that they are rather underpaid for the hard job done and the pending renewal of their equipment is long overdue, 2 issues currently impossible to tackle structurally due to the razor thin profit margins (if any) handlers are operating under because of the extreme pricing pressure airlines at BRU have put on them.

The solution proposed is that BRU would use part of its own healthy profit margin (whereas it does very little itself in the whole process of flying, one has to admit) to help invest its handlers invest in more and better material (see it as a way to invest in the service levels of the airport and to make it a more reliable airport once again), whereas airlines operating at BRU should be made to accept paying certain minimum handling fees to guarantee a correct payment for those working on the ground jobs outsourced by them.

I think that indeed both are very valid suggestions to be looked at and they could be made to work if all actors are brought around one table, with some legislative help from the government. Long term it is extremely damaging to our country's export oriented economy if its main airport is seen as an unreliable point of entry because of all these recurrent strikes and other events which can be traced back to a lack of underinvestment somehow.

I agree that if it means ticket prices must be made a euro or so more expensive because it it, then so be it: nobody who really matters is going to stay home, if he really needs to be flying. Clearly a structural solution is needed here and it goes almost beyond saying that more money will thus have to be found somehow in order to deliver it: in the absence of that, we're just waiting till the next strike happens really, only to cry out loudly about it, once again.

[PttU]

Concreet over gisteren: Swissport erfde in 2012 het afhandelingscontract met Brussels Airlines door afhandelaar Flightcare over te nemen. Met stijgende passagiersaantallen woog het al niet winstgevende contract van Swissport steeds zwaarder rond de nek van het bedrijf.

Does this mean Swissport is paid the same, regardless of the amount of passengers on a flight? Or even regardless of the amount of flights?