Ryanair and Norwegian Attacked by Spain’s Unions as Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca Flights Remain Grounded

BUDGET carriers Ryanair and Norwegian are being attacked by Spain’s trade unions as flights to and from the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca remain grounded.

With worldwide redundancies across the aviation sector and predictions that at least 100 million jobs connected directly to tourism could be lost due to the Covid-19 crisis, Spanish unions have been flexing their muscles against the two companies.

They believe that matters could have been handled better on a number of fronts, and sent a letter recently to the Spanish government calling for more help for air travel industry.

Unions have already gone to arbitration in Spain over a dispute with Norwegian and the way their members have been treated over new contracts.

Norwegian Air was in difficulty long before the coronavirus pandemic, and appointed a new boss last year to restructure the company.

Over Ryanair, unions won a court battle in January over 224 redundancies in their Canary Islands and Girona bases.

Today (May 8) the Irish carrier issued temporary unemployment notices (ERTE) to the reprieved staff due to the pandemic situation.

Workers though are entitled to claim up to 70 per cent of their salary under ERTE rules, and social security contributions are maintained.

The trade unions though are now waiting to see what else might happen to Ryanair in Spain, after last week’s announcement of 3,000 job losses across the company’s European operations.