Oct 12, 2014
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Lufthansa that is seeking to expand low-cost services has to face opposition from the trade unions. The airline has been locked in a dispute with the Vereinigung Cockpit union over an early retirement scheme.
Lufthansa that is seeking to expand low-cost services has to face opposition from the trade unions. The airline has been locked in a dispute with the Vereinigung Cockpit union over an early retirement scheme. The main item in this dispute is the planned change of the existing retirement scheme. Actually Lufthansa, Germanwings and Lufthansa Cargo pilots (in total 5.400) leave the company with an early retirement provision at the (average) age of 59 years. The company wants to lift this up to 61 years. Pilots at Lufthansa's budget carrier Germanwings went on strike earlier on over the plans. The company is considering renting out the A340s earmarked for long-haul low-cost services to Switzerland-based PrivateAir and leasing them back with Swiss pilots who are not subject to its collective agreements. This is an unprecedented move after failing to reach an agreement with trade union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) that would also have required the planes' pilots to work longer hours before receiving overtime benefits. The pilots are threatening a fifth strike in a row so far this year. Earlier this month a pilots' strike led to the cancellation of 200 flights and hit the travel plans of about 25,000 passengers.
English: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/28/lufthansa-strategy ...
Focus on the strike (in German): http://www.spiegel.de/thema/lufthansa_streik/
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.