Thousands of passengers were left stranded today as workers at Iberia Airlines walked off the job for the first day of a two-day strike.
Iberia was forced to cancel more than 400 of its 2,000 flights for this Monday and Tuesday as cabin crews protested the fact that they haven’t received a pay increase in four years. This is a tough situation for Spanish workers, who live in a country with one of Europe’s highest inflation rates, between 3.6 and 4 percent annually in the past few years. And that’s just the official rate. Living in Madrid I can say that here at least it seems to be much higher.
Spain’s national airline has been hit hard by the recession and this new blow will only worsen its situation. It couldn’t be helping Iberia’s chances of clinching a proposed merger with British Airways either.
Information on the affected flights is available here.