Authorities to limit flights at Poland’s busiest airport amid dispute with controllers
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From the beginning of Could, flights at Poland’s busiest airport, Warsaw Chopin, will solely happen between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and might be severely restricted in quantity, with precedence given to 32 locations.
The brand new measures have been launched by the federal government in a regulation printed late on Monday as the results of a battle over pay and situations with air visitors controllers, 131 of whom are threatening to go away their jobs on the finish of April if their calls for are usually not met.
Because the row about air visitors controllers’ pay in Warsaw deepens – 180 of 206 controllers are set to go away Could 1 – Poland adopts guidelines limiting flights to/from Warsaw Chopin to 9am – 5.30pm with 32 precedence airports – incl. LHR, LTN and STN – with one flight per route per day. https://t.co/2zNKiUI7mC
— Jakub Krupa (@JakubKrupa) April 25, 2022
Among the many connections to be given precedence are three London airports (Heathrow, Luton and Stansted), in addition to Frankfurt, New York, Chicago, Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Rome and Amsterdam. The one Polish airport on the checklist is Szczecin-Goleniów airport in northwest Poland.
On Monday night, the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, mentioned that “contingency plans” have been in place ought to an settlement not be reached with unions. Additional talks between the 2 sides are happening right now.
The battle started on the finish of final 12 months, when new bylaws concerning phrases and situations of employment and wages have been launched, regardless of some workers not having accepted them.
The federal government says the choice was mandatory attributable to decrease passenger numbers throughout the pandemic. It has additionally famous that air visitors controllers are very nicely paid, with Morawiecki saying on Tuesday that their common month-to-month wage in Warsaw is 45,000 zloty (in comparison with a nationwide common wage of round 6,600 zloty).
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Adjustments proposed by the Polish Air Navigation Providers Company (PANSA), the state company coping with air visitors administration, would deliver that wage all the way down to round 30,000-33,000 zloty, reported Cash.pl earlier this month.
The Commerce Union of Air Site visitors Controllers (ZZKRL), nevertheless, says that the difficulty is not only about pay, but in addition security and work tradition. It has issued a listing of seven calls for.
Amongst them are the removing of latest guidelines that enable a single individual to cowl a shift alone, compliance with the labour legislation concerning working time, and the introduction of clear remuneration insurance policies.
Flights have been delayed by as much as three hours and a few have been cancelled at Poland’s busiest airport, Warsaw Chopin, as no settlement has but been reached with air visitors controllers protesting over pay demandshttps://t.co/dlQGfggTjC
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 22, 2022
Controllers say the brand new laws lower the extent of air visitors security and in addition improve controllers’ stress ranges, which might contribute to errors at work.
“The battle is under no circumstances predicated on the difficulty of ‘shopping for us’ and financials alone,” says the union. “The bottom line is to rebuild an establishment with a excessive security tradition for each those that work in it and people for whom the establishment works. We’re speaking concerning the lives of tons of of 1000’s of passengers a day.”
In keeping with the Polish Press Company (PAP), the infrastructure ministry has ready a draft of laws that may enable the employment of international controllers in Poland.
Such measures, nevertheless, could be unlikely to be in place by 1 Could – a interval that’s significantly busy for Polish airports as many Poles journey for the lengthy vacation weekend as each 1 Could and three Could are nationwide holidays.
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Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She beforehand labored for Reuters.
