Brussels Airlines staff to go on strike on Monday

The staff of Brussels Airlines will lead a 24-hour strike which will start Monday at 05:00. The three unions (SETCa/BBTK, CNE/ACV-Puls, ACLVB/CGSLB) denounce “untenable” working conditions and demand the respect of agreements signed in early 2021.

Brussels Airlines workers have felt badly handled for months: failure to respect rest times, work-life balance compromised, flight combinations that are too demanding. They regularly tried to convince management to adjust their working conditions.

“The Covid crisis has hit our sector very hard. As unions, we immediately took responsibility and started negotiating with our management about how we could make our company survive this crisis. We were forced to lay off valued colleagues, cut salaries sharply and agree to higher production targets,” the unions wrote in a statement. “A year later we see that these agreements are not respected, interpreted in creative ways, … We have to cancel flights due to lack of personnel, people do not have enough weekly rest, colleagues are brought into poverty by the excessive use of technical unemployment. The bar is set extremely high for front-liners, but management is unable to meet its own operational expectations.“

A final conciliation was held last Friday, without success, after which the workers themselves called for a strike.

“For months we have tried to get our message across to the management. We escalated to multiple reconciliation attempts at the Ministry of Labour, but Brussels Airlines management persisted in its anger. Instead of tackling the obvious problems, they prefer to continue using temporary work and hiring cheap temporary workers.

“Soft messaging has reached its limits: we see no other solution than taking social actions. We regret having to take this step to get our message across, but we are at the end of our rope.

“We hope this time our voices are heard and real actions are taken. That written agreements are complied with and that we can avoid future actions. Responsibility for this rests in the hands of management”, concludes the unions’ statement.