Cockpit strike: Strike regardless of a ten,000 euro pension – the category wrestle is escalating amongst Lufthansa pilots | EUROtoday

Four months after the strike vote by the pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), the Lufthansa pilots are actually getting critical. The pilots will go on strike on Thursday. From midnight to midnight they don’t need to function quite a few Lufthansa Airlines and Lufthansa Cargo flights and thus, in line with the official demand, implement higher pension provision.

Also collaborating within the strike are flight attendants from the UFO cabin union, which fashioned a strategic alliance with its cockpit colleagues just a few months in the past. The solidarity of the Lufthansa staff on either side of the cockpit door factors to the actual motive for the strike. In reality, behind the economic dispute there may be greater than only a wrestle over variable retirement advantages, however somewhat a profound disagreement inside the Lufthansa group, during which not all pilots and flight attendants are on the identical facet.

There is not any motive to concern that the women and men within the cockpits of Lufthansa jets might be at risk of sinking into outdated age poverty on the finish of their working lives. Depending on their skilled expertise, they obtain round 10,000 euros in retirement advantages per thirty days, the overwhelming majority of which is predicated on an organization pension from Lufthansa. The solely factor that arouses the pilots’ displeasure is what they see because the disappointing rate of interest on retirement reserves on the capital market.

For the vast majority of German pensioners, the dispute could sound like a luxurious downside. The incontrovertible fact that the overwhelming majority of the 4,800 pilots from Lufthansa and Lufthansa-Cargo voted in favor of a strike is because of the dissatisfaction of the flying workers at Europe’s largest airline that has been rising through the years.

What brings the crane pilots to the barricades shouldn’t be just a few share factors in retirement advantages, however the general technique of Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr. Although he’s a skilled industrial pilot himself, he’s not notably widespread along with his personal pilots. His colleagues within the cockpits accuse him of systematically undermining their place within the firm.

In latest years, Spohr has, so to talk, constructed up low-cost competitors inside the firm by establishing new flight operations. More and extra former Lufthansa routes are actually served by subsidiary airways equivalent to Lufthansa Discover or Lufthansa City.

350,000 euros annual wage for the primary model Lufthansa

The change ought to hardly be noticeable for the passenger, however much more so within the firm’s coffers. While Lufthansa pilots obtain prime salaries in comparison with the business and have negotiated excellent working situations over time, the flying workers on the subsidiaries are worse off. The result’s a multi-class society inside the group.

How existential the menace is from the angle of the flying personnel is proven by the participation of the flight attendants, who don’t cite a possible lack of retirement advantages, however somewhat the actual menace of job losses. At the Lufthansa core firm and the outdated regional subsidiary Cityline, which is kind of being wound up, 800 jobs are threatened by the group technique, in line with Ufo. Behind the group’s targets of striving for extra productiveness and suppleness have been wage deteriorations that had a direct affect on the workload and restricted capacity to plan one’s non-public life.

Spohr justifies his technique with the weak efficiency of the primary model. Lufthansa Airlines has just lately often carried out considerably weaker financially than its personal vacationer airline Eurowings. Experienced Eurowings pilots with annual salaries of maybe 150,000 euros needed to cross-subsidize the massive Lufthansa with their work, the place long-time pilots are purported to deliver residence 350,000 euros.

The incontrovertible fact that the best-off skilled group within the firm is now on strike for higher situations shouldn’t be solely arousing emotions of solidarity inside the firm. The present labor dispute can be a battle between competing unions for air sovereignty inside the firm.

The Verdi service union has just lately gained vital affect and is setting the tone for the collective agreements at Eurowings and lots of different airways. Similar to the railways, the small unions concern for his or her affect. In order to strengthen their place, the VC colleagues based an alliance known as “We are Aviation” with the opposite pure aviation unions – the aforementioned Independent Flight Attendants Organization (Ufo) and the air transport staff’ union answerable for floor workers (Agil).

This merger can be a menace to the Lufthansa Group, as a result of with entry to just about all areas of flight operations, the alliance of small corporations can paralyze it at will. A tricky strike is simply the proper time as an illustration of energy.

But the longer the strike menace was not adopted up with motion, the extra Lufthansa started to query how highly effective the crane pilots actually are. It was repeatedly rumored in prime administration circles that the pilots themselves didn’t have a big majority inside their very own ranks. The board merely let the calls for for retirement advantages slide – and nothing occurred.

“After the initial vote at the end of September, we deliberately gave Lufthansa several months to come to a negotiable solution,” explains VC President Andreas Pinheiro and assigned Lufthansa duty for the one-day strike that adopted. “We would have loved to have avoided an escalation.” That does not sound notably combative.

The pilots are actually receiving reinforcements from their colleagues within the cabin, who complain, amongst different issues, that Lufthansa is decreasing the cabin crew on its A350 long-haul jets from twelve to eleven. To make this potential, one of many two flight attendants beforehand reserved completely for top notch must assist out in economic system. The business service “Aerotelegraph” quoted from an inside letter from the workers consultant, which is alleged to talk of vacationers who “squat for hours in front of their empty trays”. According to the letter from the cabin representatives, the administration is “now resistant to advice.”

For Lufthansa boss Spohr, the strike is a fragile matter, and never simply due to the disagreeable exterior affect within the midst of the celebrations for the corporate’s one centesimal anniversary. The diminished income and compensation funds related to strikes are extraordinarily expensive. The wave of strikes final yr value Lufthansa round 450 million euros and was a significant reason behind the core model’s monetary underperformance.

At a capital market occasion within the fall, Spohr introduced a far-reaching reform course of, as a part of which 4,000 jobs in company administration are to be minimize by 2030. The goal of the measure known as “Matrix Next Level” is to scale back redundant buildings and enhance the profitability of the community airways. With the restructuring, the CEO could have wished to ship a sign internally that financial savings weren’t solely being made on flying personnel within the flight operations, but additionally on administration.

The embassy doesn’t appear to have appeased the crane flyers – a minimum of not these from VC and UFO. Apparently solely Lufthansa and Cityline are literally on strike on Thursday. Competitors Ryanair, Easyjet and Condor fly. And alongside them, different airways from the Lufthansa group equivalent to Swiss, Austrian, Ita, Brussels, Eurowings and Discover.

This article was written for the financial competence heart of WELT and “Business Insider Germany” written.

Steffen Fründt is a enterprise correspondent for the WELT Group and experiences on corporations from the aviation, tourism and sports activities industries.