BERLIN (AP) – Nearly all flights at Germany’s Cologne-Bonn airport and the majority at nearby Duesseldorf were cancelled or diverted yesterday as a result of strikes that also affected local transportation, day-care facilities and local administration in Germany’s most populous region.
Cologne-Bonn airport said that all but two of the day’s 136 planned flights wouldn’t depart from or arrive there, German news agency dpa reported.
In Dusseldorf, only 89 of the planned 330 flights were expected to take place as scheduled, with most of the rest being cancelled.
The one-day “warning strike” by airport security staff comes amid difficult pay talks for employees of Germany’s federal and municipal governments and for airport security staff.
Unions are seeking a 10.5 per cent pay raise, while employers so far have offered an increase totalling five per cent in two stages and one-time payments of EUR2,500 (USD2,630) per employee – which unions have rejected as insufficient.
