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Staff at Geneva airport end strike after deal agreed with management

Travellers frustrated by a strike at Geneva airport, June 30th 2023
Travellers frustrated by a strike at Geneva airport, June 30th 2023 Copyright  AFP vidéo (capture d'écran)
Copyright AFP vidéo (capture d'écran)
By Daniel Bellamy
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About a thousand workers at Geneva airport went on strike early on Friday morning in protest at the freezing of their wages disrupting air traffic for around four hours.

Normal traffic will resume at Geneva airport on Saturday after a deal was reached with staff to end a strike over pay which saw dozens of flights cancelled affecting thousands of passenger. Air traffic ground to a halt for around four hours on Friday morning.

Staff were angry over a proposal to freeze wages.

An agreement was made with the striker's union to delay the wage freeze for at least a year and a joint commission was established.

"An agreement was reached and the union accepted the management's proposals," Geneva Airport wrote on Twitter, adding: "Traffic will resume as expected Saturday."

It's the first strike at the airport, which is Switzerland’s second-busiest, since it opened in 1919. Around 18 million passengers used it last year.

The leader of the Public Services Union earlier justified the industrial action saying members felt they had no other option than to go on strike.

"We're having more and more difficulty simply getting wages indexed to the cost of living. So obviously, in such a context, attacking salary mechanisms and therefore lowering them, when the company is making a profit, obviously provokes resistance, and staff have no other solution," said  Pierre-Yves Maillard, the president of the Swiss Trade Union.

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