Airport strike hits Germany

Scores of flights were canceled Wednesday as hundreds of airport workers walked off the job at several German airports, part of a wider labor action to win higher pay for public service workers.

At Frankfurt International Airport — Germany's largest and the third busiest in Europe — hundreds of ver.di union ground crew workers walked off the job early in the morning.

Some 1,000 total baggage handlers, check-in counter workers, airport firefighters and others were expected to take part in the warning strike in Frankfurt, said union representative Frank Bsirske.

Ver.di has called for a raise of 8 percent for Germany's 1.3 million public service workers, backdated to Jan. 1.

The government has countered with a 5 percent increase over two years, accompanied by a longer working week, but ver.di has rejected it. A new round of talks is scheduled for Thursday.

In Berlin, where ver.di is seeking pay increases of up to 12 percent, subway, tram and bus workers launched a 10-day strike Wednesday.

The pay disputes come amid concern in Germany over perceptions that wealth from the country's recent economic upswing is being distributed unfairly.

Over recent weeks, companies — including automaker BMW AG, household goods manufacturer Henkel KGaA and mobile phone manufacturer Nokia Corp. — have made high-profile announcements of job cuts, despite healthy earnings.

At Germany's second biggest airport, in Munich, 100 of 462 planned flights for Wednesday morning were canceled, mostly domestic Lufthansa flights, spokesman Peter Pruemm said.

In all, Lufthansa called off 142 flights countrywide because of the strikes, which also affected airports in Duesseldorf, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Saarbruecken, Cologne-Bonn, Dortmund and Muenster-Osnabrueck. Transcontinental flights were not affected, Lufthansa said.

The public service strikes started Tuesday, halting public transport for several hours in Hanover.

In a separate dispute, GDL, the union representing train drivers, also threatened to launch a rail strike next week unless national railway operator Deutsche Bahn AG signs off on a wage agreement by Friday.