AENA accord staves off air-travel nightmare
Unions withdraw threat to shut down nation's airports
Seeking a last-minute deal to avoid an Easter travel nightmare, the government's state-owned airport operator AENA and union representatives headed off a nationwide shutdown of air facilities Wednesday when they reached an agreement over jobs.
The accord was hammered out after Public Works Minister José Blanco agreed to keep intact the collective bargaining agreements until 2018. This will guarantee employees' current work conditions until then, even if services at Spain's airports are contracted out as the government proposes in its drive to reduce state spending, an AENA source said. Unions had threatened to shut down air facilities for 22 crucial high-travel days during Easter and throughout summer. Analysts warned that such a drastic move would further hurt Spain's lethargic economy.
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero told lawmakers in Congress that the agreement "guarantees complete normal operations in airports" and the "mobility of citizens and visitors during significant dates."
"It is a good agreement that shows with dialogue you can reach things and I am very grateful to the unions who have shown good faith to sit down and discuss how to protect the rights of workers," Blanco said.
The government and the CCOO, UGT and USO unions spent nearly 17 hours at the negotiation table before an agreement was reached in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
In an effort to prevent massive cancellations in travel plans, tourism and Public Works officials began transmitting messages to tour operators and governments abroad that the strike in Spain has been headed off.
"The strike would have been very damaging for the Spanish tourism industry because the dates proposed were so important. A strike could have ended up hurting GDP," Juan José Fernández, a Link Securities analyst in Madrid, told Bloomberg.
