By Jean Christou
CYPRUS Airways (CY) yesterday issued a plea to staff not to go ahead with tomorrow’s planned four-hour strike.
In a statement to employees, management said it was not too late to reconsider the strike, which is scheduled to take place between 7am and 11am.
The strike will hit 24 flights: 16 of them will be delayed, affecting some 1,500 passengers from the 2,500 expected to fly with CY tomorrow.
“It’s a four-hour work stoppage, but we have rescheduled our flights,” said CY spokesman Tassos Angelis. “We’ll have some delay for these flights. The delays will be from one hour, two hours, three hours…”
The industrial action over pay will also cost the struggling airline hundreds of thousands of pounds.
CY’s biggest union, Cynika, which has some 1,200 members, is seeking a 4.5 per cent rise in wages and other benefits, in line with increases given to semi-government bodies.
It says the union has not made any claims in the past two years because of the company’s financial situation.
Cynika repeated its stance yesterday at a press conference in Nicosia.
But CY says it traded several financial concessions with the union in return for industrial peace in 1998 and claims the unions are now attempting to seek more than what they are entitled to.
In its letter to staff yesterday, CY said it was “saddened” by the risk of a strike that would be “damaging” and “an unnecessary confrontation”.
“It’s not too late to call it off,” the letter said. “We did not decline to discuss issues of increases.”
Cynika president Costas Demetriou said yesterday there was nothing new to make the union reverse its decision to strike tomorrow.
“Everything is still the same,” he said.
Demetriou said the union enjoyed unconditional support from the engineers’ union and workers’ union Peo, while the other two CY unions, the pilots and the smaller breakaway cabin crew’s union have promised not to cross any picket lines.
Pilots union Pasipy refused unconditional support for the strike, but feels the company has acted unfairly in not keeping its side of last year’s deal with Cynika.
“The Cyprus Airways practice of signing agreements which later it disputes or complains about or protests must end,” a Pasipy announcement said. “Otherwise the lack of trust created between various sides will have disastrous consequences.”
Angelis said he did not believe the measures would escalate and expressed confidence in statements by Communications and Works Minister Leontios Ierodiaconou that the government would not tolerate the union’s actions.
“I don’t think it’s going to escalate,” Angelis said. “We’re very firm on that, and the government is very firm.”
But the union was angry at Ierodiaconou’s stance: “We do not agree with the position expressed by the minister,” said Cynika’s Demetriou yesterday.
He said the union will meet on Monday to decide whether further strike action would be necessary.
