Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, the Secretary of State for Tourism, has slammed the TAP pilots strike as being bad for business and bad for a re-emerging tourism economy.
Claiming that visitors to Portugal spend a total of €1 million every hour, Nunes said that many of them arrive on TAP flights and, with the service reduced to minimum from May 1st to 10th, harm will be done to the tourism industry and the image of Portugal.
Nunes criticised the planned strike, saying it also will have serious consequences for the trade and catering sector.
The Secretary of State was speaking at an event hosted by the association of hoteliers and restaurateurs so VAT was never off the menu.
Mário Gonçalves, the President of AHRESP, said that after four years of austerity and poverty the time has come for change, quoting figures showing 60% of hotel and restaurant businesses are at a high risk of bankruptcy and that in the last quarter of 2014 some 20,400 jobs were lost, and between 2012 and 2013, 34% of the sector’s companies went under.
Gonçalves also spoke of the "irresponsibility of the TAP pilots.”
Last minute negotiations are carrying on at TAP's head office this evening despite yesterday’s claims that all was lost and the pilots would strike. Nobody expects a happy outcome.
This covert meeting at TAP’s headquarters is against a background of 50,000 cancelled reservations so far and 3,000 flights that will not take off. An estimated 300,000 passengers are affected this holiday weekend and beyond.
The Secretary of State for Transport warned that the airline may run out of money and then will have to close.
If it does, “It is likely that the European Commission will have to impose severe remedies in restructuring TAP," said Sergio Monteiro, hinting at a 30-40% redundancy level.
Sérgio Monteiro earlier accused the pilots of having sabotaged the company's operations last summer which was unhelpful and caused the pilots union to demand an apology, saying Monteiro's statements, "as well as false, are very serious" and suggests he might wish to repeat them in court.
The TAP pilots union claims that the government is reneging on an agreement signed in December 2014 which gave selected long-serving pilots the right to a 15-20% stake in the company under the privatisation scheme.
The works council at TAP at least has been consistent in asking that the company is not privatised at all and accuses the government of bullying tactics when it starts to bang on about restructuring and redundancies.
More interestingly, the council accuses the government of creating "business opportunities for its friends” although no names are mentioned.
The pilots union SPAC says that its members are aware that this is a fight that it simply has to win, claiming that it is nothing to do with privatisation but everything to do with the 15-20% share agreement negotiated by Economy Minister Pires de Lima last December which conveniently has been ignored now that push has come to shove.
In terms of labour relations this is a disaster with an intransigent government, an airline president whose long running remit was to prepare TAP for privatisation at the best possible price and a union that is withdrawing labour due to the government going back on its word.
The privatisation process continues with opportunities for a 'rock bottom' offer price increasing daily.
