After the crews, it is the turn of the pilots of the Easyjet company in Spain to start a strike. With this movement started on Friday, they demand the restoration of working conditions prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Two weeks earlier, the crews had ended a similar strike that ended with a settlement.

In the midst of the high tourist season, this new Easyjet strike joins the ongoing strike of the flight crews of another low-cost airline, the Irish Ryanair, where two Spanish unions have called a strike until the beginning of January 2023.

At Easyjet, the strike will take place from Friday to Sunday this week and the next, then from Saturday August 27 to Monday August 29, at the airports of Barcelona (northeast), Malaga and the Mediterranean islands of Palma de Mallorca and Menorca .

8 flights already canceled at Easyjet

On Friday, the first day of the strike, eight flights from the British company were cancelled, most of them at Barcelona airport. Regarding Ryanair, 20 flights have been canceled in Spain since Monday, according to the USO union.

The strike is “the only alternative option in the face of (Easyjet’s) refusal to restore the conditions that the pilots had before the Covid-19 pandemic and to negotiate the second collective agreement,” explained the Sepla union in a press release.

The Spanish Ministry of Transport has established a minimum service obligation between 57 and 61% in order to “reconcile the interest of citizens and their mobility needs with the right to strike of workers”, it has explained in a note of press.

A pay cut granted during the pandemic

The Sepla union defended in its press release that “during the worst months of the pandemic”, Easyjet pilots had accepted a salary reduction “to guarantee not only jobs, but also the very survival of the company in Spain “.

But, according to the union, Easyjet has now returned to a “similar” volume of flights as it had before the pandemic. For its part, the flight crew of the British company had ended a strike that began earlier this month on July 28, after obtaining a 22% salary increase spread over three years, according to the USO union.