The Lufthansa pilots’ strike announced for Wednesday has been averted. “There is a deal,” a spokesman for the Vereinigung Cockpit union (VC) confirmed to the Reuters news agency. However, a decision must still be made to avert the renewed strike by Lufthansa pilots announced on Wednesday. Lufthansa initially did not want to confirm the agreement. During the night, VC had announced a second wave of strikes starting on Wednesday, which could only be prevented by a “serious offer” from Lufthansa.
At the Lufthansa core company, there should be a strike on Wednesday and Thursday, at the freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo one day longer. The negotiations began at 10 a.m. and took place under great time pressure because Lufthansa would have had to decide on flight cancellations by 12 p.m. in the event of a strike. The company said that this was necessary both for aircraft and crew scheduling and for at least a minimal lead time for passengers. Lufthansa HR Director Michael Niggemann had declared the threat and the escalation to be false, but nevertheless made a new offer.
Pilots demand inflation compensation
Lufthansa had already canceled the entire operation of the core company for last Friday after the VC had called on its members to go on the first wave of strikes. Around 800 flights with 130,000 passengers were canceled. The VC changed its previous call for automated inflation compensation and now called for an 8.2 percent annual tariff increase from 2023 – in addition to a 5.5 percent increase this year. In an initial offer, Lufthansa had offered a flat-rate increase in the basic salary of 500 euros as of September 1, 2022 and by 400 euros as of April 1, 2023. Depending on the previous salary, this results in increases of between 5 and 18 percent. The union had rejected this offer before an agreement was finally reached on Tuesday.
CEO Carsten Spohr said the previous evening that in times of high inflation, significant salary increases are appropriate, especially in the lower groups, and that some starting salaries are no longer sustainable. “We have not left our employees alone in the pandemic, and we will not leave them alone in inflation either.”
According to Lufthansa, the combined claims of VC before the change amounted to around 900 million euros in additional costs in two years. The personnel costs in the cockpit would increase by 40 percent. This is beyond reasonable, even without considering the financial consequences of the Corona crisis. It was only in July that the Verdi union almost paralyzed flight operations at Germany’s largest airline for a day with a warning strike by ground staff. The flight attendants’ union Ufo wants to negotiate for its members in the fall.