By Jean Christou
CYPRUS Airways (CY) has secured engineering services in Beirut and Tel Aviv to check its aircraft in the event of industrial measures by its own engineers, the Cyprus Mail has learned.
As a back up, the airline has also engaged the services of a company in Cyprus, after engineers failed to show up for overtime on Monday as part of their measures against the company.
The airline was forced to send two planes to France at a cost of thousands of pounds when 15 members of the engineers union ASYSEKA called in sick, leaving no one to carry out aircraft checks at Larnaca.
ASYSEKA has been engaged in a long running battle with the company over rankings and promotions. The company had accepted a proposal from the Labour Minster to solve the dispute, which led to strike action in August, but the engineers failed to respond to the offer.
Minster Andreas Moushiouttas earlier this month withdrew his mediation, saying the engineers had crossed the line and that he wanted nothing further to do with them.
They have now called a strike for next week but are preceding the action by other industrial measures that CY says breaches the labour code, since Moushiouttas did not call an official impasse in the dispute, normally the only means to justify strike action.
The company wants the engineers either to accept or reject the proposal but to do so officially, and also to inform management when they plan to take measures instead of taking the airline by surprise.
CY spokesman Tassos Angelis yesterday accused ASYSEKA of employing terror tactics in their dispute with management.
” They used terrorist tactics on Monday. It was a hit and run and then they hide and say ‘look for me’,” Angelis said.
” We are going to confront them on this one and hit back hard. Enough is enough. Let them wonder for a change what is going to happen to them. They are persona non grata for the Minster and for everyone. Everyone is against them.”
ASYSEKA president Simos Loizou said yesterday the Labour Minister had had the dispute in front of him for six years but had not done anything about it, ” and no one accused him of anything.”
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.
