In Düsseldorf, 330 flight movements were actually planned. 89 of them are about to happen. In Cologne, 131 planned passenger flights are affected.
Due to warning strikes, many connections at Düsseldorf and Cologne/Bonn airports will be canceled on Monday. At North Rhine-Westphalia’s largest airport in the state capital, more than 1,000 employees have been asked to stop work. The strike began at 3am, a spokesman for the Verdi union said. Therefore, 700 to 800 attackers are expected on site.
In Düsseldorf, 330 flight movements were actually planned. 89 of them are about to happen. 205 arrivals and departures were canceled and 36 were transferred to other airports or the next day, according to an airport spokesman. There must be an emergency operation for ambulance flights and relief goods, for example.
In Cologne/Bonn, the first stoppages started on Sunday night. According to Verdi, aviation security employees are called there, that is, employees of personnel and goods control, as well as freight control. “All checkpoints are closed,” a Verdi spokesman said in the morning. The airport announced on Sunday that 131 scheduled passenger flights could not take place between 6 am on Monday and 6 am on Tuesday. 136 are planned regularly during this period. In Cologne there were also legal disputes between the airport and Verdi over the occupation of the airport’s fire brigade. In the end, both sides agreed to include 24 emergency workers during the warning strike.
The Verdi and Komba unions called warning strikes. The background to this is negotiations for public sector officials at the federal and municipal levels, as well as national negotiations for aviation security officials.
Strikes also on buses, kindergartens and offices
In addition to NRW’s two biggest airports, warning strikes are also planned in many other areas of public life in the most populous federal state on Monday, such as buses and light rail vehicles, day care centers and offices. Several rallies are also planned.
Verdi announced, among other things, that many kindergartens in Cologne, Bonn, Troisdorf, Hennef and Gummersbach are affected by the warning strikes. This also applies to municipal hospitals and waste disposal companies in the Verdi district of Cologne-Bonn-Leverkusen. Citizens would have to be prepared for longer wait times at offices. In Münsterland, Verdi called for warning strikes in some municipal administrations and municipal enterprises.
Employers submitted an offer during national negotiations for federal and local government employees. It includes a salary increase of five percent in two steps and one-off payments in the amount of 2,500 euros. Unions rejected the offer as insufficient. Verdi and the civil servants association demand 10.5 percent more income, but at least 500 euros more per month. Collective bargaining is scheduled to continue on March 27.
(APA/dpa)