With a large majority in the ballot, Lufthansa’s cabin workers have now also prepared to strike. A date for the industrial action is still pending.
Lufthansa passengers must expect strikes from another professional group. Shortly before the fifth wave of Verdi warning strikes began on the ground, the flight attendants voted for strikes with a clear majority of more than 96 percent. This is what the ballots at Lufthansa and its regional subsidiary Lufthansa Cityline revealed, as the UFO union announced on Wednesday in Mörfelden-Walldorf near Frankfurt.
Demand for 3,000 euros in inflation compensation
A decision on a possible strike scenario and a date will be made later. UFO boss Joachim Vázquez Bürger emphasized the determination of the members and the entire cabin, which is also reflected in the numerous new entries. A strike is still avoidable: “We remain open to appropriate offers and fair solutions from the employer in order to possibly avert strikes at short notice.”
For the approximately 18,000 cabin employees at Lufthansa and the almost 1,000 employees at Cityline, UFO is essentially demanding 15 percent more money with a contract term of 18 months. The union also wants to achieve an inflation compensation bonus of 3,000 euros and higher allowances.
In the separate collective bargaining negotiations for the Lufthansa parent company and the regional subsidiary Cityline, the union rejected the respective offers as inadequate. Against the background of high losses in purchasing power due to inflation, employees are looking at the sharply increased profits that CEO Carsten Spohr wants to present on Thursday (March 7th) for the past 2023 financial year.
The Independent Flight Attendants Organization (UFO), founded in 1992, is a sectoral union that exclusively represents flight attendants, primarily at Condor and the Lufthansa Group. In individual flight operations, it competes closely with the DGB union Verdi, which also wants to organize the flying staff. Coordinated cooperation between the two hostile unions is unlikely.
Eight days: Longest strike in Lufthansa history
Until the first strike in 2012, which was also about defending against temporary work, the representation of the mostly service-oriented cabin crew was considered tame. That changed in the years that followed, when then-chairman Nicoley Baublies led the UFO in the longest strike in Lufthansa’s history in 2015, lasting eight days.
In the post-Corona year of 2022, UFO was the only union in the Lufthansa Group to refrain from taking industrial action. In the collective bargaining agreement, the lower wage groups in particular were raised, while the inflation compensation bonus was postponed until the current collective bargaining round.
A warning strike at the Lufthansa subsidiary Discover this year was the last work stoppage led by the union, which has had to contend with considerable intra-union squabbles since 2018. The current chairman, Joachim Vázquez Bürger, flies with Lufthansa Cityline and was elected in November 2023.
Ground staff are on strike from Wednesday evening
Regardless of the UFO strike vote, the Verdi union has called on employees in Lufthansa’s technology, logistics and training departments to go on a warning strike from Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. All other members of the ground staff should join the strike on Thursday at 4 a.m. The warning strike ends for all participants on Saturday at 7:10 a.m. In addition, the aviation security forces in Hamburg and Frankfurt are scheduled to go on strike on Thursday, so that no passengers will be able to board there that day.
Source: Stern
