SITAVA hereby announces that, in view of the Government’s passivity, the workers are left with no other alternative than to fight for their jobs, for their companies, for their survival,” the union’s president, Fernando Henriques, said at a news conference in Lisbon.
“So we have decided to hand in formal notice of a strike in all handling companies for the 1, 2 and 3 of July of 2016.”
The strike will affect leading handling companies Groundforce and Portway, but also covers employees of temping agencies and outsourced services working in the field, Henriques explained.
At present, according to SITAVA, there are some 5,000 workers in the sector in Portugal and the union represents 1,300 of them.
It is imperative, Henriques argued, for the Socialist government to intervene in the sector to bar Groundlink, which provides handling services for rapidly expanding low-cost Ryanair, from operating in the country. Groundlink, he said, is acting in a “fraudulent” manner and not observing workers’ rights - so undercutting other companies in the sector.
It is this “unfair competition”, the union argues, that led to the mass redundancy of 256 employees of Portway - part of French-owned Vinci - that is now underway. However, the union has also criticised Vinci, which is now on its third round of mass redundancies since it won the concession to operate at Portugal’s airports.