Airport security workers vote to intensify strike

Barcelona Airport’s recent woes look set to continue after security staff voted on Wednesday to intensify an indefinite strike planned to start on Friday. An assembly of Eulen employees, from the company providing security at the airport, voted 92% in favor of extending industrial action from three days a week to every day, and all day long rather than at peak hours. As Catalan News reported last week, the disgruntled security staff originally agreed to strike indefinitely every Friday, Sunday and Monday, from 5.30-6.30am, 10.30-11.30am, 4.30-5.30pm and 6.30-7.30pm. While the new striking conditions are registered, the security staff will keep to the previously agreed schedule until August 14 or 15.

Since July, the security staff have been working to rule, which has caused long delays at airport checkpoints, with up to a thousand passengers missing their flights. Yet, the airport workers remain defiant and say their decision to increase the scope of the industrial action was motivated by suspicions that the minimum service likely to be established by the Spanish government will be between 85 or 90%. "It is ridiculous because already 10 to 15% of the staff are on vacation, so it is as if we had no right to strike,” said strike committee member, Genoveva Sierra, who added that apart from voting in favor of intensifying the strike, the workers’ representatives also agreed to carry out, as yet unspecified, protests.