OGB-L (Luxemburg) sign ground breaking ground handling agreement
July 17, 2015
The ITF affiliated OGB-L have signed a ground breaking sectoral agreement for ground handling workers, which provides a compulsory re-hiring of workers in case a service provider would lose the market or part of it.
The agreement also secures other important gains for ground handlers.
Below you will find the information we received from OGB-L yesterday. (Josef Maurer of the ETF translated it into English).
Yesterday, the OGB-L has signed the first ever collective agreement applicable for the whole ground handling sector in Luxembourg. It has been co-signed by Groupement des Services Aéroportuaires du Findel, which is the employers organisation affiliated to FEDIL (Fédération des Industriels du Luxembourg). The agreement applies to all present and future companies in the groundhandling sector in airports.
The contract has duration of 2 years (retroactively since 1 January 2015) and applies to employees holding the following handling activities:
• administrative assistance and supervision on ground before and after flight
• passenger handling (assistance at departure and on arrival, check-in)
• baggage handling
• cargo handling (freight and mail)
• operations on the tarmac (assistance to aircraft parking, loading and unloading of the aircraft, transport of crew and passengers, start-up assistance of the aircraft)
• cleaning and aircraft service (external and interior cleaning of the aircraft, de-icing)
• flight operations and crew administration (flight preparation at the departure airport, post-flight, crew administration)
• ground transportation (transport of passengers, crew, luggage and cargo, special services)
• catering
The collective agreement includes 12 wage categories in 44 annual levels. From the fifth year of service, employees are entitled to a full 13th month’s salary. All employees are entitled to 30 days leave PLUS a loyalty leave from 1 to 6 days determined by the length of service. The sectoral agreement also provides a bonus of profit sharing. If the company would not have a canteen, employees are entitled to 220 meal checks per year at €40 each (the employee’s share is is 3 €). The supplement for overtime is 50%, for night work 25%, for work on Sundays 70% and 100% for public holidays.
The agreement also contains binding obligation for transfer of staff in case of loss of handling the contract. The buyer is obliged to take the assignee of staff under the same conditions.
The sectoral collective agreement for the handling is based on an initiative of the OGB-L. As part of the liberalization policy pursued by the European Commission, Luxembourg is obliged to submit the handling activities in a tender which will result in an opening of the market to competition. With the signing of the sectoral CLA, all sector employees enjoy the same pay and conditions of work. This will help to fight social dumping.
Tags: ground handling, Groupement des Services Aéroportuaires du Findel, OGB-L, sectoral agreement