In the vast empire of Lufthansa, the year 2024 began as the old one ended: with pilot strikes in a smaller sub-company.
After the five-hour warning strike at the new holiday airline Discover one day before Christmas Eve, it was the pilots of the Belgian subsidiary Brussels Airlines who canceled a number of flights last weekend.
And the passengers of the airline with the highest turnover in Europe have to prepare themselves for further inconvenience, because collective bargaining under the sign of the crane is once again proving to be difficult.
Negotiations begin
With around 25,000 employees, the ground staff of the Lufthansa Group in Germany are one of the largest employee groups going into negotiations this Thursday. Their strike power is undisputed and their demands are strong – 12.5 percent more money, an end to overtime in the East as well as higher shift bonuses and an inflation compensation bonus. A plane cannot take off without technicians or check-in staff, just as it cannot take off without a pilot or flight attendant. In view of the mobilization in the companies, Verdi negotiator Marvin Reschinsky expects an offer from the employer in the first round.
The MDax group is repeatedly confronted with its complicated structure – with a number of sub-companies such as Eurowings, Discover or, as the youngest subsidiary, City Airlines, in addition to the parent company. In each of these companies, the different unions such as the Cockpit Association, Verdi and the Independent Flight Attendants Organization (UFO) operate, each pushing for their own collective agreements, and occasionally in fierce competition with one another. In addition, there are the foreign subsidiaries in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and perhaps soon in Italy, so that there is almost always a strike somewhere in the branched Lufthansa group.
Lufthansa must remain competitive
Keeping the labor disputes within limits and creating the best possible agreement with the social partners is the task of Human Resources Director Michael Niggemann. He must keep in mind that Lufthansa remains competitive in all segments. This means that in point-to-point traffic or on feeder flights, the company’s logic means that similarly high salaries cannot be paid as in the particularly profitable transcontinental traffic. Not even with an expected operating profit of around 2.6 billion euros for 2023. According to CEO Carsten Spohr, this is urgently needed to make investments in more environmentally friendly aircraft, infrastructure and personnel.
Although the peace obligation has already expired, negotiations with UFO for around 18,000 flight attendants at the parent company are still largely peaceful. There is more trouble here with the subsidiary Cityline, whose around 1,000 cabin workers are supposed to move to the new company City Airlines, which has almost the same name, according to management’s wishes. The problem: The new airline only operates in Munich and Frankfurt, while the Cityline still has nine decentralized stations and therefore many people would have to change their place of work. According to the UFO, acceptable conditions for this are not even remotely recognizable.
The Cockpit pilots’ union is trying to establish a joint collective bargaining commission to cover all of Lufthansa’s flight operations in Germany. Lufthansa should always meet the same negotiating partners at all companies, in order to prevent them from being played off against each other. In the past, however, the VC was often concerned with protecting its core clientele at Lufthansa’s main company. Reconciling this with the interests of the employees in the subsidiaries is not always easy. As a result, Verdi was able to break into the VC phalanx, at least with its investment in Aerologic and its subsidiary Eurowings, and conclude its own collective agreements for pilots there.
Cause for new strike concerns
How strong the VC is in the new Lufthansa holiday airline Discover, which currently has 24 aircraft, will become clear in just a few days. After the first warning strike, the union called on its members to vote on indefinite strikes. After the pre-Christmas strike experience, the company is also demanding a so-called “social partner charter”, a kind of code of conduct. The VC sees this as a restriction on their collective bargaining rights and is initiating a potentially momentous industrial action: If the five hours on the day before Christmas Eve could still be “eliminated” from the flight schedule, the company is expecting a number of flight cancellations in the event of a longer strike.
There are also other reasons for passengers to have new strike concerns: the company should probably present an offer to the Lufthansa ground staff by the second round on January 23rd at the latest. According to Verdi, employees at several locations have already assured each other of their willingness to fight and have made so-called “strike promises”. According to negotiator Reschinsky, Verdi wants to see an agreement by mid-March at the latest, otherwise strike votes and strikes would be unavoidable.
