by Lufthansa Flyer | Mar 13, 2017 | Berlin, Featured, Lufthansa, Strike |
The strike by Berlin’s Ground Crew has now been extended through Tuesday, March 14 until 5pm local time.
Lufthansa, SWISS and Austrian have now cancelled all flights that serve Berlin through the end of the strike. The strike was scheduled to end at 5:00a on Tuesday March 14, but apparently the union thought it was a good idea to extend the misery for passengers for another day.
Please be aware that there may be residual cancellations that leak into March 15 due to the positioning of aircraft.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Mar 12, 2017 | Berlin, Featured, Strike |
Lufthansa has announced that it has cancelled all flights to between from Munich or Frankfurt to Berlin for Monday, March 13, 2017. This as a result of a strike announcement by Ver.di who represents Ground Workers at both Berlin airports (Tegel and Schonefeld).
The strike scheduled for tomorrow comes on the heels of a walkout last Friday, and also comes conveniently during the ITB travel show taking place in Berlin at the same time. Plans call for upwards of 2000 workers to walk off the job at 4:00a Monday through 5:00a Tuesday, making for a 25 hour strike.
If your plans included transiting Berlin tomorrow please use this link to see what your options may be. Typically you can rebook to travel on a different day for no charge, get a refund, or switch to a Deutsche Bahn train ticket to get you to your destination.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Feb 16, 2017 | Featured, Lufthansa, Strike, Vereinigung Cockpit |
Lufthansa announced yesterday that they’ve agreed in principal to the recommendations that came out of mediation sessions with Vereinigung Cockpit. Now it’s up to the Union to vote on the recommendations. The vote is expected to take place by late March.
In summary, here is what the deal looks like:
- Pilots will get a retroactive pay raise of 2% going back to January 1, 2016, and an additional 2.3% pay raise effective January 1, 2017.
- On January 1, 2018, an additional raise of 2.4% will be paid, and yet another raise of 2% on January 2019.
- A one-time ‘bonus’ will be paid that will amount to €5000-€6000 per pilot.
- The deal would be in effect until 2019.
Keep in mind this is only one part of the multi-faceted labor issue. The harder portion of reaching complete labor peace involves figuring out how pensions will be earned and paid. So we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
Lufthansa, though agreeing to the proposal, did come back with a response that suggested consequences are in the offing as a result of this deal. With the deal expected to cost Lufthansa at least €85 million annually, LH has suggested that it may use cabin crew on 40 aircraft that are not subject to the agreement. Most likely this would come from the pilots being ‘acquired’ through the Air Berlin deal that sees LH operating AB aircraft on their routes beginning this year. They are not subject to this agreement and would be one easy option to help mitigate at least some of the increase in labor cost.
Union representatives suggested that this deal may not be an easy one to sell to their members due to the issue revolving around the 40 aircraft that would have cockpit crew not covered by the agreement.
Also as part of the agreement and announcement, LH has indicated that no jobs will be impacted due to this arrangement.
