The Netherlands: Amsterdam airport security guards call 24-hour strike on Sept. 4

Security guards at Europe’s third-largest airport, Amsterdam’s Schiphol, will hold a 24-hour strike calling for better wages on Sept. 4, unions FNV and CNV said Wednesday.The airport said it was too early to know how it would affect the 200,000 passengers expected to travel through Schiphol that day, but urged the unions and the security companies to solve their dispute. FNV said it expected a large part of the approximately 4,500 security guards at Schiphol to join the strike. “Almost all the guards joined in on the shorter work stoppages and there is a great willingness to take actions further,” union spokesman Mohamed Gafki said. “We have given the airport two weeks notice, so they can make arrangements with airlines and to give the security companies time to come up with a better offer,” he added. The guards at Schiphol have held several shorter stoppages in recent weeks, causing longer waiting lines for passengers but no disruption to flights. The unions said the walkout should affect other, as yet unnamed, locations in the Netherlands. <br/>