Minimum services do not include scheduled passenger flights
The Arbitration Court has decreed minimum services for the strike in ground handling services at Portuguese airports called by STTAMP, the Portuguese Transport Workers’ Union on Saturday and Sunday (August 31 and September 1).
According to a STTAMP press release on Monday “the Arbitration Court hearing was held to define minimum services for the announced strike”, which covers the workers of SPdH – Serviços Portugueses de Handling (Groundforce).
The Court decided to decree minimum services “for all flights imposed by critical situations relating to the safety of people and property, including ambulance flights, emergency movements understood as declared flight situations, namely for technical or meteorological reasons and others which, by their nature, make flight assistance absolutely unavoidable”.
Minimum services also include all military flights, state flights (national or foreign), and “all flights that at the time of the start of the strike were already in progress according to their initial planning, and whose destination are national airports assisted by SPdH”.
It was also decreed that “on both days for the Azores, work must be provided to ensure the first landing and take-off on the route between the mainland and the region, and for Madeira, the work necessary for the first landing and take-off between this region and the mainland must also be guaranteed, in addition to the work inherent in the first landing and take-off of the flight between the islands, specifically between Funchal and Porto Santo”.
Given this decision, the union had to “designate workers necessary to ensure minimum services defined”.
The Court recalled that “the use of strike workers is only lawful if non-striking workers cannot provide these minimum services under normal working conditions”.
STTAMP has said that it regrets that “it has had to come to this” and reiterates that “it will be up to the management to take full responsibility for this stoppage because at no time did it present any alternative or proposal that could have prevented the strike”.
Management says the opposite, and has said that it has a contingency plan for the strike days, which, even with minimum services enforced, looks certain to cause some considerable upset to regular scheduled passenger flights.
Source material: LUSA
