Cabin crews of Dublin-based Ryanair, the largest low-cost airline in Europe, started a five-day strike in Portugal on Wednesday, but airline staff have been ordered by the government to continue providing minimum service to passengers, media reported.
The Portuguese government has meanwhile demanded that the company's employees provide the most basic services during the strike, and continue to operate flights to the Azores, Madeira, as well as a number of European cities, including Berlin, Cologne, London and Paris.
The strikes in Portugal comes as Ireland's High Court blocked the civic action by Ryanair pilots from the British Airline Pilots Association scheduled for 22 to 23 August. BALPA accused Ryanair of “decades” of "refusing to deal with unions”, which resulted in "a management that apparently doesn’t understand how to work with unions” and “a company that doesn’t have a number of standard agreements that any union would reasonably expect in any workplace”.
Last year, The airline faced simultaneous strikes being forced to delay or cancel one-sixth of 2,400 European flights after pilots in Germany, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands walked out of their jobs.