A bitter conflict pitting Lufthansa management against much of the German airline’s workforce has been left “more entrenched than ever” after a week of industrial unrest, one of the unions involved said Friday.
Hundreds of flights were once again cancelled on Friday due to a two-day pilots’ strike, capping a week where cabin crews and pilots staged back-to-back walkouts for five straight days.
On Thursday the company cited the wave of industrial unrest as one reason for accelerating savings plans, including by closing a regional subsidiary, CityLine.
Joachim Vazquez Buerger, president of the UFO union for cabin crew, described the move as “a massive additional provocation” that would “worsen” the disputes over working conditions.
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However Vazquez Buerger told AFP that there would be a pause in strikes for now, “to give Lufthansa an opportunity to make a sensible offer”, which he said the company had not done so far.
“However, if nothing adequate comes, then there’s nothing left for a union to do but to call further strikes,” he said.
The unions have also reacted to comments in an open letter by Karl Gernandt, board chairman at major Lufthansa shareholder Kuehne Holding, in which he accused them of making “disproportionate” use of their right to strike.
Pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit charged that Gernandt’s comments showed a “lack of seriousness”.
Vazquez Buerger said that Gernandt “must seriously ask himself whether the course pursued by management, consisting in attacking its own staff in this dispute with such harshness, is in the investors’ interest”.
Contacted by AFP, the Lufthansa Group declined to provide further details on the state of negotiations with the unions.
Friday’s strike led to a swathe of cancellations, particularly at the country’s busiest airport in Frankfurt.
A spokeswoman for the airport operator Fraport said 647 flights had been cancelled across all traffic.
Lufthansa says it expects air traffic to largely return to normal on Saturday but warned “isolated flight cancellations and delays” were still possible.
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