Airport bus drivers postpone solidarity strike

Monday's planned strike among airport and flight transfer bus workers was postponed despite no agreement having been met.

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The pressure on healthworkers trade union Kommunal and the Association of Private Care Providers (Vårdföretagarna) to reach an agreement has been mounting since negotiations fell through on Friday.

Bus drivers for the airport buses Flygbussarna and flight transfer buses had said that they would call a strike if an agreement wasn't reached before Monday afternoon.

The planned strike would be called out of solidarity for fellow union-members, who cannot negotiate the collective agreement they want with their employers.

Unions were set to resume negotiations with mediators during Monday morning, according to Dan Lundqvist Dahlin, spokesperson for Kommunal.

“I am afraid I can’t give you a more precise time,” said Dahlin to news agency TT prior to the meeting.

The strike would include 390 employees on the airport buses Flygbussarna in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, as well as the flight transfer bus lines Arlanda-Västerås and Arlanda-Stockholm.

However, the strike was postponed until Tuesday, giving mediators some more time to broker a deal between employers and unions.

"I see the possibility of a new agreement for personal assistants. Therefore we continue our mediation and we postpone our solidarity measures on the airport buses for 24 hours," said Lenita Granlund of the union Kommunal in a statement.

The effects of the on-going negotiations were made more complicated for travellers to and from Sweden first by a conflict within the security business, which was threatening to take out the airport security checks.

However, mediators managed to broker a deal between the two parties late on Sunday night.

"We regret that the conflict, which doesn't really concern Swebus or the coach industry, is threatening to affect our passengers that are trying to get to Arlanda with Swebus flight transfer," said Ingvar Ryggesjö, of Swebus, in a statement.

The bus employers have countered the strike threat with a potential lockout on the same bus lines, and some additional ones, from May 2nd.

Information about how the buses will run can be found on the Flygbussarna or Swebus websites.

TT/The Local/rm
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