CYPRUS AIRWAYS (CY) employees have again come under heavy fire from Communications Minister Averoff Neophytou, who yesterday lambasted their fondness for strike action.
Both CY pilots and engineers have staged two-hour walkouts this month, grounding flights and leaving tourists stranded as they called union meetings to discuss developments in their separate running disputes with management.
“If workers at the national carrier do not become aware of the damage they are causing their own company with their continuous strikes and acting up – the pilots on the one hand and the engineers on the other – the damage they are doing to themselves, they will close down the national carrier,” Neophytou said yesterday.
He said the fact that the air transport sector was to be liberalised as part of EU harmonisation should make all CY employees keen avoid strikes and to work harder.
“If they were aware of the increased competition around ahead of liberalisation, then instead of strikes they would be having meetings on how to increase productivity and improve their services towards the travelling public,” the minister said.
This is not the first time Neophytou has hit out at CY employees, who have a long track record of disrupting the airline through strike action.
CY engineers, represented by the ASYSEKA union, yesterday had a meeting with airline bosses at the Labour Ministry to talk over the dispute over promotions that caused a two-hour walkout at Larnaca and Paphos airports on July 20. The union are pushing for improved promotion prospects, while CY bosses say they will not give in to strike “blackmail”.
No agreement was reached during yesterday’s meeting, and another meeting with Labour Ministry mediators was set for August 1.
The CY pilots who walked out a week before the engineers are demanding that they have priority when it comes to promotions in the airline’s charter subsidiary, Eurocypria. Eurocypria pilots are dead set against the demands of their CY counterparts.
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.
