Baggage handling strike set to cripple Portuguese airports

Baggage handlers and airport staff working for Portway have begun a three-day strike over the freezing of career progressions.

The strike was called by the National Union of Civil Aviation Workers (SINTAC) and will affect the airports of Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Funchal.
In a statemement, SINTAC indicated that it had decided to press ahead after a pre-strike warning because “the company, via its directors of the Vinci Group, had replied by failing to agree to the company’s agreement in force and failing to comply with career progressions agreed in 2016.”
SINTACT states that “as if that were not enough, Portway began to cut social benefits and acquired rights for all of its workers won over the past 20 years, thereby not recognising all the efforts of the workers over the years and having but one goal of not reducing its profits so as to fill the coffers of the Vinci Group even more.”
The Union stresses that “for three years workers had seen the brakes put on salary increases and career progression so as to improve the financial health of the company yet they contributed immensely towards the company’s growth.”
And SINTAC has also decided to press ahead with a fresh strike warning involving Portway, this time over overtime work, extra hours including over the weekend, which would go ahead between 1 January and the end of March.