Lufthansa downsizes

Lufthansa (LH), Germany’s largest airline, has agreed short-time working arrangements with 27,000 staff – over three-quarters of all its employees.

The pact, with trade unions, applies to cabin and ground staff in Frankfurt and Munich as well as management. An agreement with the pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit has not yet been reached. The extent of reduced working hours is dependent on the loss of work and can be up to 100%.

"With short-time working, we want to secure jobs of our employees in these difficult and unusual times. Our goal remains trying to avoid redundancies," said Michael Niggemann, chief officer Corporate Human Resources and Legal Affairs at Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

The airline, for the time being, is increasing the short-time working allowance up to 90% of the net salary lost through short-time working.  How long Deutsche Lufthansa AG can pay these top-up amounts depends largely on the duration of the crisis.

In addition to these measures, the Supervisory Board, Executive Board and Management have voluntarily waived part of their salary for at least a six-month period until the end of September. It is also proposed that the 2019 dividend will be discontinued.

More than 30 companies in the Lufthansa Group, whose employees have German employment contracts, have already or will gradually fall under reduced working hours. These measures also come into effect for airlines in the Lufthansa Group in Austria, Switzerland and Belgium.

www.lufthansa.com

Index/Home page
 

OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)

All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum