Finnair has just announced that they’re going to have to cancel a majority of their flights tomorrow due to a (mostly unrelated) labor dispute.
The airline canceled 26 flights Sunday evening (November 24), and then it’s expected that 250 more flights will be canceled Monday (November 25). Finnair was scheduled to operate 377 flights on Monday, so the company only expects to be able to operate about 120 of them.
Those who are impacted by this should be contacted by email or message with rebooking options. You can find the status of specific flights at this link.
So, what’s going on here? Which work group is the airline having contract issues with? None, it seems…
This strike was called by the Finnish Aviation Labor Union, IAU, which has informed the airline of a support strike on Monday, November 25, 2019. This strike is being done in support of Posti, the Finnish postal service, which has been in an ongoing labor dispute.
Finnair flight attendants and pilots aren’t engaged in this support strike, but rather this is being called by the union representing many of the ground workers.
The support strike will have major impacts on Finnair flight operations. The strike impacts critical services at Helsinki Airport, including loading and unloading of aircraft, fueling, push-back of aircraft, Finnair customer services, catering, and maintenance operations.
Jaakko Schildt, Finnair’s Chief Operating Officer, said the following:
“Finnair is not a party in the dispute related to the support strike, however it’s impacts are now seriously disrupting the travel plans of over 20,000 Finnair customers. We are extremely sorry for the trouble and concern this situation is causing our customers, and we are doing our best to mitigate the impacts to them. We are working to find suitable reroutings for customers impacted by this, but rerouting such a large number of customers unfortunately takes some time. ”
Bottom Line
Finnair is canceling about two thirds of their flights on Monday over a “support strike.” Ground workers in Helsinki are essentially showing solidarity with the negotiations of the Finnish postal service.
Hopefully this gets resolved ASAP, and we don’t see even further cancelations as a result of this.
Peter, to be precise it was one of the (smallish) employer organisations which killed the proposed agreement. Everybody can assess whetehr they had good grounds for that.
As a Finn I have to say that this no longer has anything to do with the actual workers.
Unions no longer enjoy the de-facto state and they are loosing members every year, 5% in the last four years alone. Soon less than 50% of men belong to any union. Every now and then the unions need to show that they still matter -- like they did in the 50's.
The issue is now that...
As a Finn I have to say that this no longer has anything to do with the actual workers.
Unions no longer enjoy the de-facto state and they are loosing members every year, 5% in the last four years alone. Soon less than 50% of men belong to any union. Every now and then the unions need to show that they still matter -- like they did in the 50's.
The issue is now that one union would be loosing third of their members as they move to another union. This weekend all the unions involved in the original dispute agreed to the proposal -- except for one of the new unions, lol. They are just causing future problems for the workers at the expense of their (unions) own existence.
Any modern Finn hardly receives any mail, it's 2019 after all, so they just need to realise that world is changing.
Unions make everything worse, no wonder Europe is slowly becoming an after thought in the global economy
As a finn, this is fairly normal. Happens every once and a while.
It is also why Finland is one of the best places to live in the world. Workers need they're leverage and this is how it works.
I fully acknowledge it's easy for me to say, as I' not impacted by this, but at the same time it IS the price we all bay for sane and stable society. The contrast is striking nowadays and comparing that to single day of inconvenience... is no comparison.
Workers of the world unite!