Article from BTNews 5 DECEMBER 2016
Strike hiatus at Lufthansa
Management at Lufthansa were in talks at the weekend to try to resolve a dispute which led to some 4,450 flights being cancelled over six days of action by the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) pilots’ union. More than 500,000 passengers were affected.
The airline on Wednesday, the day the initial six-day wave of strikes ended, made the union a new offer of a two-step 4.4% increase in pay – 2.4% for 2016 and a further 2% for 2017 – plus a one-off payment, which it said met a key VC demand.
“The union has repeatedly told the media that it would be willing to enter mediation on the basis of an offer of this kind,” a company statement added. There was, however, no immediate reaction from either side as negotiators met to discuss the offer.
Lufthansa followed up by announcing it would be able to operate almost all its scheduled flights on Thursday, and by implication for the rest of the week, with only 40 services needing to be cancelled as a result of the strikes over the preceding days.
Chief officer hub management Harry Hohmeister said: “We want to urgently avoid any further damage to our company and finally return to offering our passengers the kind of service they can expect from us.”
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