In the middle of the holiday season, there is a strike in the airline industry. The ground staff of the largest German airline goes on a one-day strike – this will lead to cancellations and delays at Lufthansa and its subsidiary airlines.
Next Wednesday (July 27), Lufthansa passengers will have to prepare for increased flight cancellations and delays. In the ongoing wage negotiations for around 20,000 ground staff, the Verdi union has called for a one-day warning strike. Ground staff include technicians and logisticians, without whose services the aircraft cannot take off. The warning strikes are scheduled to begin at 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday 27 July and last until 6 a.m. on Thursday 28 July. The employees at all Lufthansa locations, for example in Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich or Berlin, were called to the warning strike, as Verdi further announced.
Verdi had rejected an initial tariff offer from Lufthansa, but agreed to continue negotiations for August 3rd and 4th. According to union information, the company had offered fixed amounts and a result-related component for a period of 18 months during the negotiations.
The union, on the other hand, is demanding 9.5 percent more money in the wage tables for a 12-month term. With a term of 12 months, the lower wage groups should particularly benefit. The salary increase must be at least 350 euros and, in addition, all hourly wages should differ significantly from the statutory minimum wage, which will rise to 12 euros an hour in October.
In view of the overwork, the high inflation and a wage cut for three years, significant wage increases are justified, said the negotiator Christine Behle. She is Verdi Vice Chair and also Deputy Chair of the Lufthansa Supervisory Board. The situation at the airports is escalating, said Behle. The overloading of employees due to a significant shortage of staff, high inflation and a three-year wage cut would put the employees under increasing pressure.
A pilot strike at Lufthansa is also possible this summer. The board of directors of the “Vereinigung Cockpit” union has decided on the appropriate ballot in preparation for a labor dispute, as a spokesman confirmed. However, the union did not give exact dates for the vote or deadlines. This is still to be decided. With the approval of 70 percent of the union members entitled to vote, indefinite strikes would be possible if the ongoing negotiations were declared to have failed beforehand. According to insiders, the union could be ready to go on strike as early as mid-August, which would still be during the holiday season. In previous years, September was also a particularly busy month, so that a strike at this time would hit the company hard.
At the weekend, German airports drew different conclusions about the start of the holiday season. There were no major problems at Frankfurt Airport on the first weekend of the summer holidays. The terminals are busy, but so far everything has been working properly, said a spokesman for the operator Fraport. At Cologne/Bonn Airport, on the other hand, there were again major problems with the handling of passengers. In front of the security areas, queues sometimes formed several hundred meters up to the terminals.
