UPDATE: Greek air traffic controllers decided on Wednesday to cancel the 3-hour work stoppage scheduled for Thursday, January 30th 2014. All flights will operate as usual.
KTG reported on January 27th 2014:
Greece’s air traffic controllers will join the pan-European ‘industrial action’ and will launch a 3-hour work stoppage on Thursday, January 30th, 2014. A day before, the Union of Electronic Engineering Air Traffic Safety will launch a 4-hour work stoppage. Greeks are joining the pan-European protest action launched by the Air Traffic Controllers European Union Coordination in order to maintain air navigation safety.
Greece
Air Traffic controllers: 11 am – 2 pm, Jan 30, 2014
Engineers: 10 am – 2 pm , January 29, 2014: will affect some regional airports (source: AthensNewsAgency)
Greek air traffic controllers want the hiring of 70 personnel.
Problems are expected on flights across up to 28 European countries as some 14,000 flight controllers across Europe could bring the airways across Europe to a partial standstill in an industrial action to protest against new centralized initiatives by the European Commission.
The Air Traffic Controllers European Unions Coordination (ATCEUC) is continuing to contest the Single European Sky (SES2+) package, which it feels will compromise safety via ‘unrealistic cost reduction and unreasonable traffic forecasts’.
ATCEUC had originally planned to strike in autumn 2013 but both sides returned to the negotiating table in a bid to resolve the issues without industrial action.
The organisation has since called the promise of dialogue ‘a big fraud’.
In a statement released last week, ATCEUC President Volker Dick said:
‘Last October, ATCEUC was given assurances that the European Commission was finally willing to discuss our views on the performance scheme, regarding the lack of real safety targets and the unrealistic cost efficiency targets.
‘Having this in mind, all 28 unions members of ATCEUC decided unanimously to postpone the Action Day scheduled for the 10 October.
‘But just one day after our meeting with the Commission, and our previous rejection of the proposal, already including over-ambitious targets, we came across an EC proposal even more unrealistic, clearly showing that the former declaration of good faith, in solving the things out through an open dialogue, was a big fraud.’ (dailymail)