PILOTS in Cyprus Airways’ (CY) charter firm Eurocypria will hold an extraordinary general meeting on Monday to decide whether or not to go ahead with strike action.
Alecos Tassouris, an official of Eurocypria-SEK, the union that represents the pilots, said their ten-day notice of strike action expired on Saturday, but no dates had yet been fixed for industrial action.
“We have called for a general meeting on Monday to look at the situation before we decide what to do,” Tassouris said.
He said the company had not submitted any new proposals, although he believes there may be some behind-the-scenes contacts taking place to resolve the issue.
Eurocypria pilots gave notice of strike action on March 2, when long-running efforts to solve a dispute with their CY counterparts over captain vacancies in the charter firm reached another deadlock.
The issue came to a head when CY pilots’ union PASIPY allegedly ordered the company to halt the promotion of a Eurocypria first officer.
Negotiations with the company had already broken down before the incident when CY allegedly went against an agreement with Eurocypria pilots and brought in six more pilots to the charter firm.
The Eurocypria pilots are understood at the time to have decided against action at the company’s request, and continued unofficial negotiations until the PASIPY incident provided the final straw.
CY’s collective agreement with the charter firm clearly states that captain vacancies can only be given to Eurocypria pilots with at least three years experience within the company.
A Eurocypria promotion last June led PASIPY to stage two crippling strikes because it wanted the vacancy for its members.
Months later, binding arbitration ruled that the position should go to a Eurocypria pilot.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
