Posted on January 27, 2012 by Fiona Hilliard

Anyone who has booked car rental in Portugal in February may have to put up with delays or cancellations to their flights next month.

NAV air traffic controllers and ground operations staff have announced that they will be going on strike as a form of protest against the austerity measures and the tri-party agreement which was signed last week.

The strike action is due to take place on February 8^th and will continue on until February 12^th, affecting two hours of every working shift.  The strikes are set to seriously affect aircraft heading into Portuguese airspace.  A lack of controllers means it won’t be possible to take care of traffic entering and exiting Portugal.

Commenting in a statement, the Worker’s Committee said that the NAV “depends solely” on the services that it provides and not on the State’s budget”, because the revenue that it provides depends on the costs that it reports to Eurocontrol.

It has been subjected to the same austerity measures as those inflicted on public companies and this is one of the main reasons for the unrest.

The disruption doesn’t end there. There may be even more headaches in the pipeline for passengers.

In other Portuguese strike news, the Union for Airport Handling Workers (STHA) has warned that they will not be providing overtime between February 7^th and May 31^st.

A statement was sent out to Público newspaper saying: “following deep analysis of the socio-economic and union situation in Portugal”, especially regarding the measures inscribed in the State Budget and the changes to the labour law which were agreed by the government last week.

These factors “constitute a serious problem that particularly challenges TAP employees and society as a whole” the STHA explained, saying that the “current government, in a blind and transversal fashion, is not boding anything positive and shows a lack of rigour.”

“TAP is not a branch of the tax department”, the union said, questioning whether the government was penalising the country’s national airline.

Action is set to take place on holidays, during surplus work periods on weekdays, and during overtime outside normal shifts, the STHA said.