Ground handling staff at Tenerife South Airport, employed by the Menzies group, will stage a series of strikes in the second half of August, in protest against what they describe as “serious and repeated breaches” of labour agreements and the conditions laid down in collective bargaining accords.
The industrial action, organised by the UGT trade union, will also affect four other major Spanish airports — Barcelona-El Prat, Alicante, Palma de Mallorca, and Málaga — on the following dates: 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, and 31 August.
Scope of the Strike
In Barcelona alone, around 400 of Menzies’ 1,500 employees in Spain are expected to join the walkout, according to union sources cited by the news agency EFE. The strike is likely to cause significant disruption, as Menzies provides ground services to leading airlines including Emirates, British Airways, American Airlines, EasyJet, Turkish Airlines, Norwegian, and Wizz Air.
Reasons for the Industrial Action
In a statement, workers’ representatives accused the company of:
- Breaching wage agreements
- Violating subrogation rights
- Poor organisation of working days and schedules
- Repeated payroll and personnel management errors
The union also alleges a shortage of staff to handle the current workload and the arbitrary allocation of annual leave without proper consultation.
Breach of Agreements
UGT claims that Menzies is in violation of three key agreements:
- The sectoral handling agreement
- The company’s own collective agreement
- The sectoral agreement ratified by the Interconfederal Mediation and Arbitration Service (SIMA) in December 2024 — an accord that had previously brought an end to an earlier strike.
