Around 150 workers from Groundforce, the main handling operator at Palma airport, gathered on Wednesday Son Sant Joan airport to demand better working conditions and threatened to go on strike this August if the company does not meet their demands. This morning’s demonstration was the first mobilisation by Groundforce workers after several weeks in which the works council, made up of CCOO, UGT and USO, had been warning of the precarious working conditions they have been experiencing for years and that the two meetings they had held with the company’s management had been fruitless.
‘We have reached a point of collapse. We cannot allow the airport to continue with this precarious situation for another season. This is the case at Groundforce, but it is happening at all companies,’ Margarita Alomar, a member of the works council, told Europa Press. The workers broadly blame the company for a lack of recruitment, excessive workloads, abuse of overtime and violations of basic labour rights such as breaks and health and hygiene conditions.
Alomar warned that, although it is not the workers’ intention, if the company does not respond to their demands and put forward solutions to their problems, the labour dispute will end in partial stoppages or a strike. ‘If it’s not today, it will be tomorrow, the airport will stop,’ she stressed.
To avoid reaching this situation, the works council has called for the ‘real intervention’ of the Regional Ministry of Labour, Public Service and Social Dialogue. Alomar stressed that they are open to dialogue with the company but are not willing to continue under the current conditions.
Around 150 workers, he estimated, gathered throughout the morning to demonstrate their discontent. Alomar welcomed the fact that temporary staff and young people also took part in the mobilisation.