The Spanish union of pilots (Sepla) has announced that Binter Canarias has filed a Temporary Employment Regulation File (ERE) "extinctive". If applied, according to the union in a statement, "it would mean the extinction of the Canary Island airline." According to this source, the company announced to its employees on October 10 that it had requested an ERE, which would affect 65 employees out of a total of 129 on staff.
Sepla has strongly criticized this ERE. "Binter Canarias, which last year was awarded the European Union prize for the best regional airline, has been transferring its own production to Naysa, a company of the Binter Group, since 2007, whose workers have no union representation," the Sepla union has denounced.
In this sense, it has pointed out that Binter has gone from having "403 workers in 2007 to the 129 that exist today." At the same time, the company Naysa has gone from having a staff of 108 people to 222 today," he criticized.
In addition, he pointed out that this business group created a new airline in September, Canarias Airlines, "to which the company's management tries to transfer by all means the workers who wish to remain in Binter Canarias S.A. protected by their collective agreement." "The company has been wanting to get rid of the agreement of its technical crew members for some time and, to achieve this, it is taking workers to other companies of its property where they have no job security," they have denounced from the Trade Union Section of Sepla in Binter Canarias.
"Binter has been contracting the services of Swiftair in recent years, while simultaneously leaving its own aircraft and crews underutilized. Thus, routes historically operated by Binter gradually became carried out by other low-cost companies. Currently, most of Binter's production is carried out through Naysa and Canarias Airlines," they criticized from the union.
ERE Negotiation
Sepla, in addition, has complained that the management of Binter "refuses to recognize the legitimacy" of this union to negotiate the terms of the ERE, despite the fact that the current collective agreement recognizes that Sepla "is the exclusive interlocutor in relation to agreements and collective agreements of the group of pilots, as well as for everything that affects collectively or individually the pilots affiliated" to the union.
"The intention of the company is to get rid of a group of workers who have labor rights included in a collective agreement of almost 20 years old, and that has been renewed twice by the current owners," they said from Sepla. "Only this explains the intention declared in the ERE to limit the production of Binter Canarias to a single plane, eight pilots and 10 cabin crew," he indicated.
