groundforce handling strike canary islands airports march 2026

Groundforce Handling Strike to Hit Canary Islands Airports

Indefinite Groundforce strike to disrupt Canaries flights

The unions CCOO, UGT and USO have called an indefinite strike for Groundforce ground staff, commencing on Monday 30 March. The action, which was postponed from its original start date of today (Friday), will take place in three distinct time slots each day and affect 12 Spanish airports where the company operates, including four in the Canary Islands.

Strike times and affected airports

The strike will be held daily between 5:00 and 7:00, 11:00 and 17:00, and 22:00 and 00:00. It impacts ground handling services (assistance on the tarmac) at Barcelona, Madrid, Alicante, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza, Málaga, Gran Canaria, Tenerife (both North and South airports), Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Bilbao airports.

Major impact on Canary Islands operations

According to the Federation of Citizen Services of CCOO Canarias, the strike will affect a workforce of approximately 1,000 employees across the islands. The union highlighted that because the strike targets a key airport operational service like ground handling, the conflict is particularly significant for the archipelago. This is due to the weight of air traffic in the regional economy and the large number of workers involved.

Dispute over pay and collective agreement

The strike call is a response to the company management’s alleged failure to comply with wage commitments set out in the collective bargaining agreement. The unions state that the company is unilaterally interpreting articles of the agreement, which in practice is leading to a direct loss of purchasing power for staff.

CCOO specifically denounces that the company is using a restrictive interpretation of Article 96 of the agreement to nullify what is established in Article 94. This article guarantees salary updates in line with inflation accumulated since 2022.

Furthermore, CCOO accuses management of having applied cuts to agreed pay rises for certain professional groups. They state this constitutes a direct breach of the current collective agreement and creates unjustified inequalities within the workforce itself.

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