Striking cabin crew of Lufthansa, has disrupted operations and caused profits to dip.
Under the aegis of the UFO Union, the cabin crew members of Lufthansa are on a two-day strike seeking to be rewarded for the efforts they put in during the pandemic. They felt they had a right to a share in the profits made by the airline. The strike has already affected thousands of passengers and will end up impacting about a lakh of flyers, with flights from Frankfurt and Munich being disrupted.
Operations of CityLine, the subsidiary of Lufthansa will also be affected.
Last week, the ground staff had walked out and caused disruption, as it coincided with the strike called by railway workers/ train drivers.
Elsewhere, in South Korea, striking doctors have forced the government to rely on the services of military physicians and public-health doctors to keep the healthcare system going.
Nearly 12,000 doctors from 100 teaching hospitals have stopped reporting for work in protest against the government’s intention to significantly increase the number of medical students that are given admission by the universities every year. While the South Korean government is trying to improve the doctor-to-patient ratio, the protesting junior doctors feel that it will only result in even lower pay for the current doctors, who are already overworked and underpaid. The protests have been on for almost a month now. Surgeries have been cancelled, emergency care is impacted and patients are having to wait for hours to be attended to. About 20 military surgeons and 138 public-health doctors have been brought in to help stabilize the situation.
In India, Zomato workers in Kerala’s Kochi will be on strike from 23 to 25 March. The delivery personnel are logging out of the app to express their disapproval of the increased working hours for more incentives. The strike, which will see participation from 5,000 delivery personnel, is being called under the Ernakulam District Zomato Delivery Workers (EDZDW). While this is just a token strike, the workers are ready to go on an indefinite strike if their concerns are not addressed.
The workers are not happy with the company’s decision to provide incentives for 14 hours of work a day instead of eight. That means, they would have to put in almost 14 hours of work to earn an incentive of Rs 500 to Rs 700.
The personnel are also irked by the fact that they were not consulted by the management before such a major decision and feel they are being exploited.
The Zomato employees are also worried about the parking fees charged at Lulu Mall and the premium for their accident insurance being raised.
T
he National Health mission (NHM) staff of Kerala are also threatening to go on strike if their pending salaries are not cleared. Almost 13,000 employees of NHM have yet to receive their salaries for two months.
In Punjab, Civil Secretariat staff took out a protest march seeking restoration of the old pension scheme, payment of pay commission arrears as well as release of pending dearness allowance instalments.
