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Bergensavisen reports.
Widerøe Ground Handling offers ground services to various airlines in Flesland. The company recently lost the tender contract it had with SAS.
– Aviation is one of the industries that was affected by the COVID-19 earlier, harder and that will be affected for the longest time. When the demand for flights decreases, we as subcontractors have less to do. In addition, we are in a market sensitive to tenders, with contracts of between three and five years with each client. This year, we unfortunately did not catch up and lost the SAS bid in Flesland to Aviator, company director Marius Myhre tells BA.
Lost 3 of 15 contracts
This summer it became clear that Widerøe Ground Handling lost its SAS contracts at Bergen, Tromsø and Kristiansand airports.
The company had its SAS agreements extended at Kirkenes, Alta, Lakselv, Svalbard, Evenes, Bodø, Trondheim, Kristiansund, Molde, Stavanger, Haugesund and Ålesund airports.
For several weeks, the management, in dialogue with the unions, has signaled an important need for change, the newspaper writes. Management has now decided to reduce the number of man-years in Flesland by 130 from 220.
– A part of our employees has found new jobs during the year and some have been laid off. But what we thought was temporary in nature appears to be long-lasting. Therefore, we no longer consider the dismissal scheme to be relevant to us. It’s just hard, Myhre tells Bergensavisen.
Union delegate: – Very demanding
The union representative in the Widerøe Ground handling workshop club, Trond Arne Skarlo, tells BA that the situation is very demanding.
– He has been demanding since March. We now have only one focus, and that is to take care of each other as best we can.
NRK has been in contact with Skarlo. He does not want to comment on the case beyond what he tells BA.
Widerøe Ground Handling is a wholly owned subsidiary of Widerøe. The company has 220 employees and currently serves 28 airports in Norway.
