The union “Vereinigung Cockpit” had limited the labor dispute to 24 hours from the outset. According to Lufthansa, flight operations started as planned on Saturday. A company spokesman said on request that largely normal flight operations were expected. Individual delays are possible, but Lufthansa had already announced on Friday evening that there would probably be no further flight cancellations on Saturday.
The first departures from the Frankfurt and Munich hubs started early in the morning. As a precaution, Lufthansa canceled flights with 130,000 affected passengers on Friday. With this strategy, a normal and stable flight plan should be achieved for the restart on Saturday. It is the last weekend of the school holidays in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.
The union called the strike after collective bargaining with Lufthansa failed. Lufthansa has criticized the strike call and called on VC to return to the negotiating table. According to Lufthansa, VC’s demands would increase personnel costs in the cockpit by 40 percent. This is beyond reasonable, even without considering the financial consequences of the Corona crisis.
In addition to 5.5 percent more money this year, the VC had demanded an automated compensation above inflation from 2023. There would also be a new salary table and more money for sick days, holidays and training. Over a period of two years, that would mean an additional burden of 900 million euros, according to Lufthansa.
The automated adjustment for inflation offered Lufthansa a legal point of attack. You failed before the Munich Labor Court with the application for an injunction against the strike. However, the Cockpit Association withdrew the demand for automated compensation, which the court also judged to be “legally unobjectionable”, and examined other formulations.
It was only in July that the Verdi union almost paralyzed the flight operations of the largest German airline for a whole day with a warning strike by ground staff. The flight attendants’ union Ufo wants to negotiate for its members in the fall. It declared its “express and unreserved solidarity” with the pilots’ strike.
FRANKFURT/MUNICH (dpa-AFX)
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