CY unions to meet over airport handling venture

THE TWO Cyprus Airways (CY) unions involved in the ongoing dispute with management over a proposed ground handling venture with another company will meet today to decide their next move.

CYNIKA and SIDIKEK-PEO have been at loggerheads with CY for months over its proposed joint venture with Swissport. Union members fear they will lose their benefits as CY employees if they are transferred to the new company

So far, dialogue has failed to produce any results, and even the revised mediation proposal by the Ministry of Labour has been rejected.

“There will be a meeting between the two unions to decide the next step,” said Andreas Pierides, the chairman of CYNIKA.

Pierides said he could not say whether strike action was on the table as a possibility. “We are not ruling it out but there is a feeling we must tread carefully,” he said.

However he said the unions would continue to insist that the 140 or so employees that would be affected by the joint venture would not back down on their insistence in remaining as CY staff.

The two unions did threaten strike action during the pre-Christmas holiday period but the potentially devastating industrial action was averted at the last minute by the Labour Minister’s proposal, which has since been rejected.

The national carrier insists no benefits will be lost in the move, while it will enable the airline to carry out the services more cost effectively and could save the company nearly £2 million a year.

Under the proposed joint venture, CY would hold over 25 per cent of shares, giving it a strong input in decision-making, should they win the contract being tendered by airport operator Hermes, which has pledged to open ground handling services to competition by next April.

At the moment, CY only performs about 20-25 per cent of the total work they hope to be doing with Swissport, assuming the venture wins one of the two licences being offered by Hermes.

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