The first collective bargaining agreements have been signed for the crews of Lufthansa’s holiday airline Discover. The agreement was concluded with a union that has so far had little support among the flight personnel.
Three years after the Lufthansa holiday airline Discover was founded, the first collective bargaining agreements have been signed for the company’s flying staff. The airline itself and the Verdi union announced that they have reached agreements on salaries and working conditions for pilots and cabin crew. The relevant contracts were signed on Friday night.
It remains unclear how many of the approximately 500 cockpit employees and the 1,400 in the cabin are members of Verdi. The Lufthansa Group’s established unions Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) and Ufo have already announced their opposition and, in the case of VC, have threatened to strike. A spokeswoman for the airline explained that they had no knowledge of the union membership of the employees.
In the Lufthansa Group, Verdi has so far concluded collective agreements for the flight attendants at Eurowings and for the group’s ground staff. According to its own statements, Verdi has also concluded a permanent arbitration agreement with an employer in the Lufthansa Group for the first time at Discover. This provides for mandatory arbitration in the event of wage disputes, but the result does not have to be accepted.
Discover, a relatively small holiday airline with 27 Airbus jets, flies exclusively from Frankfurt and Munich and is primarily intended to compete with Condor in the tourism business. The VC fears that more and more regular Lufthansa flights will be handed over to the cheaper subsidiary.
Source: Stern
