Aeroports de Paris ( ADP) indicated that about a quarter of flights to Paris-Charles de Gaulle on Thursday, June 9, were cancelled due to strikes by airport staff demanding higher salaries.
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC), asked companies to cut their flights between 7 a.m. Wednesday and 2 p.m. on Thursday. Many European airports are having huge difficulties managing passengers due to a lack of staff.
Air France, the main company operating at the Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle hub, announced that it had canceled 85 short and medium-haul flights on Thursday to meet DGAC requirements. The company also stated that schedule changes for long-haul flights are being made and that affected customers will be contacted directly.
All the unions at Roissy airport - CGT, FO, CFDT and CFTC - call upon all employees to mobilize to demand a 300 euro salary increase "unconditionally... for all".
In a joint leaflet, the unions complain that despite traffic resumption and profits made, their work is not remunerated at fair value. They denounce that "Everything increases except our salaries".
FO described the chaos experienced by workers on many European and French airport platforms over several weeks as "intolerable". According to the union, 15,000 jobs were lost in the airline industry in just two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This has put "workers under stress".
ADP's president announced at the end of April that 4,000 positions would be filled on Orly and Roissy's airport platforms. These platforms are currently facing serious recruitment challenges. Air traffic in Europe is slowly returning to normal after two years of slowing due to the pandemic.
In some European airports, there has been chaos due to a lack of staff. This is evident at Amsterdam-Schiphol and Frankfurt where many flights had to be cancelled in the last few weeks because of a shortage of ground staff. Last week, hundreds of flights in the UK were cancelled due to the same reasons.
