Air traffic controllers: Friday strike notice finally lifted

There will be no strike. Two French air traffic controllers’ unions, including the majority organisation, announced on Tuesday that they had canceled Friday’s strike notice as an agreement had been reached with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC).

“End to reconciliation: agreement reached, SNCTA withdraws its notice,” the first air traffic controllers union said on its website. A DGAC spokesperson then confirmed the agreement, details of which were not immediately released. The air navigation engineers’ union Unsa-ICNA, which also filed a strike notice on a Friday at the end of August, has also called it off, its secretary general said on Tuesday.

Catching up with salaries

SNCTA issued a “national strike notice covering all air traffic controllers and traffic control agents on Friday, September 15, 2023, from the start of morning duty until the end of night duty.” SNCTA and Unsa-ICNA demanded higher wages in the face of inflation.

Condemning the “silence of the DGAC”, SNCTA recalled that “French air traffic control, like all European service providers, is guided by European performance plans that provide for compensation for inflation through a corresponding adjustment of the royalty rate and therefore revenues. »

Numerous days of strikes by air traffic controllers earlier in the year, during the passage of the retirement law, led the DGAC to ask airlines to preemptively cancel some of their flights. The strikes have angered airlines that serve France or fly through its airspace, which has the largest number of aircraft in Europe.

Call for a strike on October 13.

The Association of Airlines for Europe (A4E), which defends the interests of major carriers based on the Old Continent, including Ryanair, easyJet, Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways, in May called on the European Commission to establish “forced arbitration” before a strike or “ protection of overflights” of the country affected by the social movement.

Also on Tuesday, the Usac-CGT air traffic controllers union, which was at the forefront of mobilization against pension reform in the spring, announced it was calling on DGAC agents to strike on October 13 as part of a national day of action. -union “against austerity, for increasing wages, pensions and for the fight against inequality.”

In France, a bill passed in the Senate in June would require air traffic controllers to go on strike 48 hours in advance, as happens in the RATP or SNCF. “This is a common sense measure,” said Transport Minister Clément Beaune, who said the text should reach the National Assembly in the fall.