Lufthansa: Lufthansa: job cuts and impending pilots strike

Crucial days for Lufthansa: The board wants to introduce its comprehensive plans for personnel loss this Monday before the pilot’s coordination ends on Tuesday.

In the run -up to a capital market information from corporate circles, it became known on Friday that the group wants to delete a fifth of the jobs in administration in the coming years. The MDAX group in Munich also wants to present the medium-term financial goals.

How many jobs it is and which group parts are affected remained open at first, but according to reports, around 3,000 to 4,000 jobs could be in danger. The company did not want to comment on the reports. The group recently had around 103,000 employees. Management has been optimistic about the current year. The operational profit before special items (adjusted EBIT) should significantly exceed the previous year’s value of 1.6 billion euros as planned.

At the same time, this Tuesday (30th 9th) ends the vote of the Pilot Union Association Cockpit (VC). She called on its members at the Lufthansa core company and the freight daughter Lufthansa Cargo to decide on an industrial action.

According to VC, at least 70 percent approval of the beneficiaries is required to get strikes on the way. Containments or non-participation are considered no votes.

It is unlikely that the union will call a strike date immediately after counting. In the case of previous disputes, the VC more often gave the opposite side to present a new offer after the end of a coordination.

Serious dispute over the company pension scheme

The matter is about company pensions and transitional supply claims of around 4,800 pilots. The union demands significantly higher contributions from the employer to the pension fund. Both sides could not agree in seven rounds of negotiations on the subject.

The head of the core brand Lufthansa Airlines, Jens Ritter, dampened the expectations of the union during the ongoing stamping. “Our economic performance simply does not allow any additional loads,” said Ritter in an interview published internally by Lufthansa. “We do not begin to have the money for further improving the already very good company pension scheme.”

Lufthansa: VC claim “simply not affordable”

The current claim of the VC would “mean an annual increase in costs for the company pension scheme for the Lufthansa Classic cockpit employee at 228 million euros,” Ritter calculated. “That would be more than a doubling. The fulfillment of this requirement would not only be irresponsible for our airline, but simply not affordable. Then there was no alternative than to shift further aircraft to more profitable flight operations.”

Ritter was still ready to talk and warned of an escalation: “We have to continue looking for ways to prevent further escalation. In our financial situation, a strike would only reduce the solution space.”

Does the airline threaten a new wave of industrial struggles?

Lufthansa also threatens new trouble on other tariff construction sites: The UFO division union recently declared discussions with the group management about a total collective solution for the cabin staff for Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cityline, Lufthansa City Airlines and Discover Airlines at the beginning of this week. Now the independent flight attendant organization (UFO) wants to enforce its demands for the cabin employees of the individual airlines in the context of independent negotiations.