The Transport Workers’ Union of Portugal (STTAMP) will take precautionary measures this week to cancel the competition for the award of handling licenses at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports.
This competitive procedure included presentations from several candidates – including the current incumbent, Menzies Portugal and a consortium of Spanish South and Clece. The candidacy of South/Clece – which provides handling for companies in the IAG group (British Airways and Iberia) was the best classified in the evaluation of the regulator ANAC.
However, Menzies Portugal announced that it would contest the preliminary award of handling licenses to South/Clece, claiming that the tender did not provide for the transfer of establishment, in particular the automatic transfer of employment contracts and workers’ rights to the new consortium.
An issue, considers Menzies and also the union structures that represent the workers, that put the handling operations at airports at risk (due to a lack of qualified personnel available to the new operator) or put the jobs themselves at risk.
After several meetings with the government and also the consortium that won the tender, STTAMP decided that it would prefer to clarify the issue in court.
“This precautionary measure is not against any company or against the economic result of the competition. It is a request for suspension to ensure that ANAC fully complies with all legal, social and operational requirements before taking a decision with such a profound impact on the handling sector”, the president of STTAMP, Pedro Magalhães, told DN.
For the union, “the competition has serious flaws in its reasoning, does not consider the social impact, ignores the PER [da SPDH, detida agora pela Menzies Portugal] approved by the Court and can lead to the insolvency of a company that employs more than 3,500 workers”.
“Our role as a union is to ensure that the final decision is legal, transparent, well-founded and does not jeopardize workers, public creditors or the stability of the airports”, said the same official. As none of the entities clarified the STTAMP issues, the union will proceed to the Lisbon administrative court.
“We did not ask for the suspension to favor any operator. We asked to protect the public interest, workers and legality”, added Pedro Magalhães.
The preliminary report issued by ANAC pointed out that, when choosing the winner, one of the criteria was the presentation of tables identifying the minimum number of material resources (NMM) and human resources (NMH) “to be allocated to baggage assistance activities, cargo and mail assistance and assistance to runway operations, per airport, for two theoretical scenarios”.
And it was at this point, called a theoretical exercise with two scenarios per airport, that the Spanish consortium Clece/South scored better than Menzies.
STTAMP’s precautionary measure will further delay a process that, in itself, leads to Menzies operating with provisional licenses. Remember that Menzies Portugal’s regular license period for ground handling operations at those airports ended on November 19th.
In order to protect itself against the difficulties and usual objections from interested parties, ANAC had proposed a one-year extension of the current incumbent’s licenses. However, the Government (the sector is overseen by the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz) decided to renew the operational authorization for only six months, which is provisional, as it considered that the annual extension was “disproportionate”.
At the end of last month, DN questioned the CEO of the winning consortium about the difficulties in the process and whether this would dampen South/Clece’s interest. But Miguel Ángel Gimeno said that the Spanish group was firm in its intention to operate in Portugal.
“We continue to have the same interest that we had on the day we presented ourselves for the competition. That is, 100%. We want to respect the phases of the process and we believe that we are moving forward at the appropriate time”, said the person in charge.