GERMANY: Germany pilot strike is suspended as union agrees to hold renewed negotiations with Lufthansa.

Record ID: 339942

  • Title: GERMANY: Germany pilot strike is suspended as union agrees to hold renewed negotiations with Lufthansa.
  • Date: 10th February 2010
  • Summary: PASSENGER SLEEPING ON CHAIR VARIOUS PASSENGERS SLEEPING DEPARTURES BOARD "CANCELLED" WRITTEN ON DEPARTURES BOARD NEXT TO LUFTHANSA FLIGHTS
  • Embargoed: 25th February 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Industry,Travel / Tourism
  • Reuters ID: LVAC4U2EED7IWI1XGNP7FOGP4NZ7
  • Story Text: A planned four-day strike by around 4,000 pilots at Germany's Lufthansa is called off less than 24 hours into the industrial action.
    Lufthansa pilots in Germany agreed to suspend for two weeks a strike that grounded about 900 flights on Monday (February 22), just as rival British Airways' cabin crew voted to join the fray to protest harsh cost cuts.
    Some 4,000 Lufthansa pilots took part in a stoppage on Monday that was meant to last for four days, leaving thousands of passengers around the world stranded, on concerns the company could try to cut staff costs by shifting jobs to foreign units.
    In a hastily called court hearing, pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) agreed late on Monday to suspend the strike until March 8 to give the deadlocked parties a chance to resume talks.
    Germany Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said the decision was a move in the right direction.
    "I am happy that both parties, Lufthansa and the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), today have agreed that from tomorrow onwards they will suspend the strike in order to start negotiating again. Over the past days I strove intensively to get mediation between the two parties. I'm very happy now that new negotiations will start. I pledge to both parties that the upcoming 14 days of negotiations will be used intensively to get final sustainable and good agreement," Ramsauer told Reuters.
    Speaking from Frankfurt, Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walther said the airline welcomed the decision.
    "It is a good decision for the clients of Lufthansa. It's a good decision for German air traffic that the strike has been postponed, that we will hopefully return quickly to normality in air traffic and additionally it has been said very clearly that we will return to the negotiating table in a constructive atmosphere and that the wages issues for within the German wages area will be finally dealt with in a constructive atmosphere, to bring the conflict to an end," Walther told reporters at Frankfurt Airport.
    "The issue on which we are restricted, concerning the wages area, has been clearly expressed by the court, the German wages area. Other issues are not on the agenda," he added.
    The spokesman for the pilots' union, Joerg Handwerg said the decision could have been reached days ago.
    "We are very happy with the result. We could have had this result already two days ago if Lufthansa were not so stubborn. We have reached what we have been trying for days now to achieve -- talks with Lufthansa, without any preconditions," Handwerg said.
    Airlines are reeling from the aviation industry's worst year ever, in which demand dropped faster than capacity could be cut, but workers are becoming increasingly impatient with pressure from employers to tighten their belts.
    Lufthansa aims to cut one billion euros ($1.36 billion U.S. dollars) of costs by 2011, to become more lean while expanding abroad.
    Europe's national flag carriers have been trying to cut their costs as they lose market share to low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet whose no-frills offers lure customers looking to cut their travel spending.
    One of the concerns raised by Lufthansa employees has to do with pay. The pilots have offered to forego increases if in return they get some control over which routes or pilot jobs are transferred to other group airlines.
    Last September, Lufthansa completed a shopping spree, adding Brussels Airlines, Austrian Airlines and BMI to its stable of carriers. It also started Lufthansa Italia.
    Lufthansa has rejected that demand, saying it would require ceding control over parts of business strategy to its workers.
    Lufthansa's last major dispute with pilots in 2001, which resulted in a costly pay increase, had to be mediated by Germany's former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, as political pressure over strikes mounted.
    The starting salary for a captain at Lufthansa is about 115,000 euros, more than for instance Easyjet's starting salary at just over 80,000 pounds ($123,700 U.S. dollars), according to the companies' recruiting websites. Media reports put the top end of Lufthansa pilots' salaries at about 325,000 euros.
    Lufthansa expected that the pilots' strike would cost it about 25 million euros a day ($34 million U.S. dollars) due to the stoppage in addition to lost ticket sales and possible damage to its reputation.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register