First the ground staff, now the flight attendants: Lufthansa is on strike again. 120,000 travelers are expected to be affected by the strike tomorrow, Tuesday in Frankfurt, and Wednesday in Munich.
Lufthansa’s ground staff went on strike less than a week ago, and now air travelers have to prepare for disruptions again. According to a Lufthansa spokesman, the strike by Lufthansa flight attendants will affect around 120,000 travelers tomorrow and the day after. The airline assumes that a total of 1,000 flights will be canceled in Frankfurt am Main and Munich on the two days: 600 in Frankfurt and 400 in Munich.
The cabin union UFO called on a total of around 19,000 flight attendants at Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cityline to go on strike at the weekend. All departures from Frankfurt will be on strike from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Tuesday and all departures from Munich on Wednesday, as UFO announced.
According to the websites of Munich and Frankfurt airports, passengers should contact Lufthansa to find out about flight cancellations. The flight status is updated regularly on the airport’s website.
Union demands Compensation bonus
The flight attendants of the core company and the regional subsidiary Lufthansa Cityline had previously voted for the strike in separate ballots with more than 96 percent each. UFO is essentially demanding 15 percent more money for Lufthansa’s approximately 18,000 cabin employees and the almost 1,000 Cityline employees over a contract period of 18 months. The union also wants to achieve an inflation compensation bonus of 3,000 euros and higher allowances.
The UFO emphasized that the group had only announced a record result of almost 1.7 billion euros in net profit on Thursday – the third best in the company’s history. “The cabin must now also be involved in this success and the concessions made during the Corona crisis must be sufficiently compensated,” said Joachim Vázquez Bürger, UFO board chairman.
In the post-Corona year of 2022, UFO was the only union in the Lufthansa Group to refrain from 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.
Negotiations with ground staff continue on Wednesday
For Lufthansa, this is just one of several current wage disputes: Last week, the ground staff organized by ver.di paralyzed much of Lufthansa’s passenger traffic with what is now their fifth wave of warning strikes. Negotiations with ver.di are scheduled to take place again on Wednesday.
The employees of the freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo had previously stopped working. Before that, Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa Aviation Training and Lufthansa Technical Training had gone on strike.