Israel airlines gear for strike
Unions fearful transportation minister’s intent on signing ‘open skies’ deal with EU spells future lay-offs
Ynet
Barring a last minute change, workers at Israel’s three main airline carriers are set to launch an open-ended strike Sunday, in protest of the government’s plans to ratify an open skies deal with the European Union they see as a threat to their jobs.
Major disruptions are expected to take place in flights from and to Israel starting 5 am Sunday.
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The agreement will allow all EU airlines to operate direct flights from Europe to Israel, and all Israeli airlines to fly to EU destinations. The respective workers unions for El Al, Arkia and Israir are claiming this will destroy Israeli airlines and and will lead to major redundancies.
Meanwhile, the three major airline carriers moved up a proportion of their Sunday flights to 4 am, in order to dodge the strike.
As things stand, the parties involved are at loggerheads with no apparent resolution in sight. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz announced over the weekend he does not intend to succumb to threats of a strike, and the proposal shall be submitted to the government for approval. The unions, meanwhile, went ahead and declared the strike.
Katz met on Friday with Finance Minister Yair Lapid to discuss the implications of the agreement. There is still a chance that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would intervene by removing the controversial deal from the agenda of the Sunday cabinet meeting. However, thus far Netanyahu refused to become involved in the conflict.
The Transportation and Finance ministries said that the agreement is expected to significantly boost tourism to Israel and to lower the cost of flights from Israel to Europe. However, it is also likely to take a toll on the revenues of Israel’s three major airlines.
To prevent crippling damage to the domestic companies, the government ruled that the agreement be implemented gradually over the course of five years, in order to give the carrierstime to adjust to new competition from foreign companies. The government is also expected to increase state participation in the carriers’ security bills at a rate of NIS 5 million a year.
However, the promised benefits did little to allay fears among airline unions, who are determined to go ahead with the strike.
Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, told Israel Radio a free skies agreement „would significantly lower the prices of airline tickets to Israel, do well by Israeli citizens, and attract many tourists” to the country.
„Such deals contain risks as well as benefits and the companies ought to exploit the opportunity” to compete more vigorously with European airlines which could also open the door to Israeli airlines landing in hundreds more cities, Katz said.
