Walkout leads to yet more luggage chaos at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport

Stoppages were apparently prompted by loss of travel benefits

               Hundreds of airline passengers were left without their luggage when ground personnel at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport walked off the job without any prior warning on Friday afternoon.

It could take several days to sort out the chaos, said Arja Suominen, the Head of Communications at Finnair, late on Friday evening.

Tom Christides, the Communications Manager of Blue1, said that the airline’s customers would get their suitcases during the course of Saturday.

          Because of the work stoppage that started around 3:00 pm on Friday, no luggage was handled, which led to delays and cancellations of many flights, even though Jukka Backlund, the CEO of ISS Aviation, had said earlier on the same day that all flights of the airlines handled by the company would take off.

The industrial action involved around 100 workers employed by Barona and another 100 employees of ISS Aviation. The two companies are in charge of the ground services for airlines at Helsinki-Vantaa.

          The Barona and ISS employees returned to their regular work shifts at midnight between Friday and Saturday, the Finnish Aviation Union reported late on Friday evening.

The stoppage affected the flights of Finnair, Blue1, Lufthansa, SAS, Austrian Airlines, and Norwegian Airlines.

           Communications Manager Tom Christides advised passengers to go straight home from the airport. The situation at the baggage reclaim area was chaotic, while hundreds of incoming passengers were staring forlornly - though with increasing anger - at a few suitcases going around on the conveyor belt.

In addition to the backlog with luggage, for security reasons dozens of passengers had to be kept in airplanes for many hours, as there were no airport buses to take them to the terminal.

           The employers were not informed of the illegal strike in advance, neither were they given any reason for the walkout, nor any demands.

More than half of the suitcases that were stuck at Helsinki-Vantaa because of the stoppage were delivered to their owners during the weekend.

According to Juhani Haapasaari, the Chairman of the Finnish Aviation Union, the reason for the industrial action was the loss of travel benefits.

              Haapasaari commented on the issue to the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) on Sunday.

Some of Barona’s employees have had travel benefits, which Finnair has now wanted to negotiate all over again.

            According to a statement issued by the Finnish Aviation Union, the protest was targeted at the one-sided policy lines of Finnair and SAS, the former employers of the ground handling staff, in the collective bargaining talks.

The negotiations are to continue on June 9th.