Major warning for Irish holidaygoers as Ryanair staff across sunshine spot to strike in DAYS after union pleas ‘ignored'
A MAJOR travel alert has be issued for Irish holidaymakers as Ryanair handling workers at airports across Spain are set to strike.
The scheduled industrial action will take place from August 15.
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Ryanair staff are set to strike across 27 Spanish airports
Credit: Getty
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The Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas was the first airport where strike action was planned
Credit: EPA
The strikes were initially expected to affect Madrid-Barajas Airport only.
But overnight Spanish union UGT announced its extension to the rest of the airports where Azul Handling operates - 27 airports including Barcelona's El Prat and Malaga.
The union said that failing a mediation talks breakthrough, the strike over working conditions would start over three days on August 15, 16 and 17 and continue four days a week until the end of the year - from 5am to 9am, midday to 3pm and 9pm to midnight.
In a statement released late yesterday UGT raged: 'The protests at Azul Handling are the result of ongoing precarious working conditions and constant violations of labour rights, with which the Ryanair group company punishes its staff."
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Saying it had requested mediation as a 'preliminary step' to going ahead with the industrial action, it added: 'The strike, which will begin on 15 August 2025, will affect all the company's bases and work centres in Spain and will take place during the following time slots: 05:00 to 09:00;12:00 to 15:00 and 9:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
'After the first three days on August 15, 16 and 17, it will continue every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday until 31 December 2025.
"The reasons for the strike announcement are the lack of stable job creation and consolidation of working hours for permanent part-time staff; imposition and coercion in the performance of additional hours, both ordinary and voluntary, with disproportionate penalties being applied in some cases; repeated failure to comply with the rulings of the Joint Committee of the Sectoral Agreement on guarantees and bonuses; and illegal restrictions on returning to work after medical discharge and on adapting working hours to exercise the right to work-life balance."
Jose Manuel Perez Grande, Federal Secretary of the FeSMC-UGT Airline Union, said: 'Azul Handling maintains a strategy of precariousness and pressure on the workforce that violates basic labour rights and systematically ignores union demands."
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The UGT was one of two Spanish unions threatening to cause chaos for holidaymakers in the Balearic Islands last month with a damaging hotel strike.
Militants vowed to blockade Majorca's Palma Airport with demonstrations coinciding with the start of the planned walkout by 180,000 hotel and catering sector workers from July 10.
Shocking moment Ryanair passenger sobs & hits door after being stopped from boarding as her 'hand luggage was too big'
The strike was called off after UGT Balears announced a pre-agreement with hotel bosses which included a salary increase of 13.5 per cent over three years it described at the time as 'the largest increase in the history of the Balearic Islands.'
Azul Handling was created in 2019 as a ground handling company primarily serving Ryanair and its subsidiaries like Buzz and Malta Air.
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It says on its websites it operates at 27 airports in Spain, covers 500 flights a day and employs 3,000 'qualified professionals.'
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