If the European Commission had its way, the already liberalised groundhandling services would be opened even more in the name of competition. However, hardly any thoughts have been spent on employees in charge of loading and unloading or cleaning and refilling aircrafts. This finally fired back as even MEPs regarded this approach as going too far: on Tuesday, they rejected the proposal of the Commission by 22 to 20 votes.

The already existing so-called Ground Handling Directive clearly showed that competition in the area of groundhandling services are in particular detrimental to employees – also see our article “Hardly any improvements for groundhandling staff at airports”. Wages are coming crushing down, training has been reduced to the absolute minimum, and working conditions have significantly deteriorated. Apart from that, the new law did not contribute anything to make groundhandling more efficient; on the contrary, in some cases just the opposite has been the case. Moreover, the Directive also has no benefits whatsoever in store for passengers.

Nevertheless, the proposal of the Commission did not go enough for the competent European Parliament rapporteur, Artur Zasada of the European People's Party: instead of three service providers, airports should work with four providers. However, this does not change the deplorable situation of workers and employees working in the groundhandling service sector. For example, the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs amendment rejected proposals of Social Democrats and the Left, which would have provided employees with guaranteed employment in case of change of employer. Unfortunately, proposals against wage and social dumping did not gain approval either. The only concession made by a majority of MEPs was in respect of training in the groundhandling sector.

Labour representatives who were engaged in many discussions with MEPs made it clear how little they thought of the situation where workers and employees were put under even more pressure by the new Directive proposal, than it already had been the case with the existing Groundhandling Directive. Apart from that, one day before the vote in the Transport Committee, the European Transport Workers' Federation organised a demonstration with over 2,500 employees and trade unionists from all EU Member States in Brussels, to once again vent their displeasure about the liberalisation craze of the Commission in the groundhandling sector.

Now the MEPs in the leading Transport Committee have drawn the consequence from the lack of consideration regarding the plight of employees: Social Democrats, as well as the Greens and the Left voted unanimously against the Commission proposal; an absolute majority was achieved due to the fact that also individual MEPs of the Liberals and the People's Party voted against the proposal.