Staff at privately owned
Meridiana Fly airline on Thursday staged sit-ins at Milan's
Linate and Malpensa airports to protest management plans to lay
off more than 1,600 employees in a restructuring that has
included the acquisition of Air Italy low cost carrier.
The airline operating domestic, European and
intercontinental flights and headquartered in Sardinia is owned
by British business magnate Aga Khan Prince Karim al-Hussayni,
who founded it in 1963 to promote tourism in Sardinia.
The sit-ins will last through October 20 and will be
followed by a strike October 24, while meetings with the labour
and transport ministries are set for October 3, 7, 9, 14, and
21, organizers said.
The workers took action after management "reiterated its
plans to cut 570 jobs in the Milan airports, 250 in Verona and
780 in Olbia," said USB labor federation organizer Aldo
Pignataro.
They will be replaced with staff and aircraft from Air
Italy, Pignataro said.
In Olbia, some 100 Meridiana workers staged a mock funeral
for Meridiana Fly with a coffin, a priest and a crown of flowers
parading through the streets to city hall.
Mayor Gianni Giovannelli, who joined them, has called on
Sardinia Governor Francesco Pigliaru to set up a meeting with
the Aga Khan.
Meridiana workers decried what they said was a recent
meeting between airline CEO Roberto Scaramella and staff at Air
Italy, in which the executive allegedly gave his assurances that
the two airlines will be merged as soon as 1,600 Meridiana
employees are sacked.
"If true, this would set an extremely dangerous precedent,"
said CISL union organizer Mirko Idili.
"Other companies would follow suit, and in times of crisis
would simply buy a similar company with cheaper work contracts,
fire their more expensive staff and replace it with the cheaper
one".
Meridiana pilots in September berated management's plan to
lay off 1,634 employees after what they said has been "a decade
of deranged executive decisions" and mismanagement by
Scaramella, who "gave himself a 700,000-euro salary while the
company lost an estimated 200 million euros in 2014".
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