Strasbourg, 06/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - A horde of airport handlers, incensed with Commissioner Kallas, assembled to demonstrate outside the European Parliament, meeting for its plenary session on Thursday 5 July. The final hope lies in the hands of the MEPs, who could still reverse the tendency in the liberalisation of ground handling services, one of the planks of a legislative package targeting airports and initiated by the European Transport Commissioner, Siim Kallas. The Council came alongside the Commission, and so only the European Parliament can now require a social dimension to this liberalisation in order to protect the workers, who are still vulnerable to being shifted from one service operator to another, with no job security. As a last resort, the unions are appealing to the rapporteur on the issue at the European Parliament, Artur Zasada (EPP, Poland), not to play the major airlines' game.
Demonstration in Strasbourg. Ground handlers from French, Belgian and German airports spilled out of some 10 coaches in front of the Parliament building. But others have come from further afield, such as Austria and Spain. Recognisable by their fluorescent tabards, obligatory for security reasons around runways, some of them held up placards attacking the European Commissioner. “Thanks for making the EU another USA, Mr Kallas", “Mr Kallas, you are the only person who still firmly believes that Milton Friedman did not turn out to be completely ignorant”. The airport reform proposed by Kallas will make competition even more ferocious between the service operators, on the pretext of making saturated European airports more efficient. But above all, the reform will leave the member states free to decide whether or not to oblige the operators to renew employees' contracts. Currently, only the Spanish ground handlers have been given a guarantee that they will keep their jobs after services have been transferred, for the entire duration of the new contract. “That is our model”, said François Ballestero, who is political secretary of the European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF). Elsewhere, the situation is far from promising.
Permanent chaos. Gérard Pétasse of France, representing the aviation union of the general transport equipment federation, summed it up: “It's permanent chaos, there are more and more calls for tender” and already, under current conditions, things can only go from bad to worse. He referred to the struggling Air France: “The companies need to make savings from the subcontractors”, he said, expressing what he sees on a day-to-day basis. If the reform is adopted as it stands, the plan is that large airports (more than 50,000 flights a year) will be able to break the monopolies of the two service providers, by introducing a third. More bad news for the handlers. As Pascal Ferci, who works at the Roissy-Charles de Gaule airport, put it, “with every transfer, they take advantage of it to trim down the salary mass”. This practice will save only pennies, and the constant awarding of contracts also jeopardises air safety, Gérard Pétasse warned: “There is no investment in staff training, because the calls for tender are too short”".
Turning to Hector Zasada. The ground handlers assembled by ETF, carrying out mass leaflet distribution, hope that the message will reach the ears of the MEPs, and one in particular: Hector Zasada: “We know that the person responsible for the dossier, Mr Zasada, is planning to finalise his report in the near future, in which he proposes a greater openness of the ground handling services; the ETF believes that Mr Zasada's proposals will serve the interests of the airlines alone”, explained Enrique Carmona, who heads the civil aviation sector of the European trade union. The political secretary of the ETF, François Ballestero, hopes that the first vote of the Parliament this autumn will make it possible to add some social measures to the airport reform. In any case, he wishes to show a spirit of compromise: “We are not opposed to greater openness, as long as there is an obligatory social dimension. If there is a transfer of personnel, we want the social conditions that go with it to be equivalent”.
On the ground in Strasbourg, the ground handling service employees gave each MEP a free airline ticket: a piece of paper promising a flight with Zasada Airlines, departing from “bad” to the destination “worse”. (MD/transl.fl)