Workers deserted their workplaces to call for a salary hike; therefore, many flights were canceled, especially at the Frankfurt Airdrome (southwest).

Since the early hours of Tuesday, employees of the controls at the freight and passenger terminals of the largest airport in the country stopped working, according to a spokesperson for the ver.di union.

This is the most important union in the service sector here and the second largest one after IG Metall, with nearly 2.1 million members.

Employees at the Hamburg, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden terminals also went on strike.

This strike is part of a salary dispute between ver.di and the Federal Association of Air Security Enterprises.

The union is negotiating a new collective agreement that would benefit nearly 25,000 airport security employees across the country and is demanding a rise of at least one euro per hour worked, among other issues.

Three rounds of fruitless negotiations have been held so far, but the parties will resume talks this week.

pgh/aph/mem/ehl