After a short period to negotiate, Iberia and its unions have once again fallen out over job cuts, with 5 days of continuous strike action to take place.
No date has currently been set, although it is expected to take place in the 2nd half of February.
The Unions rejected a plan that would cut the initial 4500 job cuts to 3,147, 30 percent, lower wage reductions and capacity cuts of 10 percent for this year rather than an initial plan for 15 percent.
Iberia’s problems stem from its short haul unit – which has to contend with low cost carriers including Ryanair, EasyJet, as well as High Speed trains. In addition, the demand for services is dropping due to the financial issues hitting Spain that have resulted having one in four workers is unemployed.
In response, Iberia have created a lower cost unit called Iberia Express – which has gone down like a lead brick with the unions as it has a much lower cost base than Iberia.
Add all this together, and you’ve got a recipe for trouble.
As no dates have yet to be confirmed for the action, automatic rebooking won’t be a possibility for now. Personally, I’d have contingency plans if I was travelling on Iberia towards the end of this month….
It seems Iberia strikes once or more every single year. I’ll never book with them, for fear of getting caught up in this crap.
BA’s greed biting them in the rear. They’re so desperate to lock in the latin america market and end up sucking up a really big mess.
BA could’ve gotten most of that LatAm access just by JV-ing with IB instead of buying them.
> Never will: It seems most of Europe is always on strike! If the garbage collectors go, so do the airlines because they belong to the same union and “support” each other.