Azul Handling, the company that provides ground service to Ryanair, says that weekend stoppages that started last Friday have not had a significant impact.
The strike, organised by Spain’s General Union of Workers (UGT) and supported by the CGT union, involves over 3,000 ground staff at Ryanair’s operational bases, including Alicante, Seville, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza, Girona, Tenerife South, Lanzarote, and Santiago de Compostela.
The workers are protesting against what they describe as exploitative labour practices, including coerced overtime, punitive sanctions, and a lack of job stability for part-time employees. The unions have accused Azul Handling of violating workers’ rights by imposing disproportionate penalties for refusing overtime and restricting access to medical leave or flexible hours for family needs.
These grievances, which have been simmering for months, escalated after failed negotiations, prompting the unions to call for partial work stoppages every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Each strike day features three daily windows of disruption, from 5:00 to 9:00, 12:00 to 15:00, and 21:00 to 23:59, targeting peak operational hours at Spain’s busiest airports. While Spanish law mandates minimum service levels to maintain essential connectivity, particularly for island routes like the Canary and Balearic Islands, the stoppages are expected to cause delays in baggage handling, check-in processes, and aircraft turnarounds.
A separate strike called by the ground staff of the Menzies Group began this Saturday at five Spanish airports “with no serious incidents, but with some cancellations,” sources from UGT reported to the ‘EFE Agency.’
In the case of Menzies, the workers from the British company have organized work stoppages for the days of August 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, and 31, at all the centers where they operate, namely Barcelona-El Prat, Alicante, Palma, Málaga, and Tenerife South. More than 600 workers responsible for various tasks within the airports are called to this strike, serving airlines such as Emirates, British Airways, American Airlines, EasyJet, Turkish Airlines, Norwegian, and Wizz Air.
