Iberia offers to create a new handling subsidiary and the departure of 1,727 employees to settle its labour dispute

CÉSAR URRUTIA MADRID

MADRID

Updated Monday,15January2024 - 13:26

Iberia has proposed to the unions the creation of a new company that groups its airport services activities and that is integrated into the IAG holding company as part of the formula to get out of the labor dispute that has resulted from the loss of eight airports in the Aena tender to provide handling services.

The offer comes in the extra time given by Aena to the airline to decide what to do with its services at those eight airports and transfer them to the winners or, on the contrary, give them to itself in what is called autohandling. The company guarantees its ground workers that their rights will remain the same as those they have in the current agreement and that is the demand that led them to raise a strike in the week of January 5 that warned of the disruptions that would be caused if their demands were not met and the calls for indefinite stoppages arrived.

Since the loss of the tenders last September, the unions have demanded that Iberia renounce being assisted at airports by companies that provide these services and guarantee the activity of its ground services by doing self-handling. The company has always rejected it outright, stating that it is not profitable.

In its proposal, Iberia adds the condition that the new company would produce an exit plan for workers over 55 years of age in December 2026 and incentivized redundancies for those who do not meet this requirement. In total, 1,727 employees would leave the company, which has 8,000 workers in its ground services. Nearly 3,000 would be affected by the loss of business resulting from Aena's insolvency proceedings.

According to the airline, this would be a concession to the demands of the workers' representatives. "The unions are the ones who have put on the table in the current negotiations these incentivized redundancies and early retirements, something that the workers themselves have been insistently demanding in recent years, and that is acceptable to Iberia with the sole purpose of making the new company as competitive as possible."