Already at midday on Tuesday, Lufthansa announced that due to the strike, more than 1,000 flights at Frankfurt and Munich airports, the airline’s two largest international hubs, will be canceled on Wednesday.
DW Giannis Papadimitriou
From 03.45 am on Wednesday to 06.00 am on Thursday the public sector union Ver.di is calling a warning strike for the ground staff of the German airline Lufthansa.
The mobilization concerns staff at airport counters, maintenance services, but also aircraft towing vehicle operators. In total, this is about 20,000 workers.
Already at midday on Tuesday, Lufthansa announced that due to the strike, more than 1,000 flights at Frankfurt and Munich airports, the airline’s two largest international hubs, will be canceled on Wednesday.
For Frankfurt, 678 cancellations are predicted, of which the first 32 on Tuesday afternoon. For Munich, 345 flight cancellations are expected on both days.
Smaller problems may occur at the airports of Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen, Hanover, Stuttgart, Cologne. According to the radio and television network NDR, 18 flights are canceled in Hamburg and six in Hanover.
The strikers are asking for increases of 9.5% or at least 350 euros per month, which they consider justified after the overtime of the last months, the wage restraint of the last years, but also the high inflation.
For its part, Lufthansa is offering increases of 150 euros per month from July and another 100 euros from January 2023, plus a 2% increase from next summer, if financial results allow. As the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung points out, the current situation in air transport is considered critical, as “the volume of passengers is the same as before the pandemic, but in the last two years one in three workers has resigned or been fired” and in addition many are sick, due to the new wave of coronavirus.
What will happen to the passengers?
In total, it is estimated that more than 144,000 passengers will be forced to change their plans due to the strike. According to a statement from Lufthansa, the company will issue another ticket “as far as possible” for passengers who will not be able to travel on Wednesday and who will be informed “as soon as possible”. Passengers who have not re-issued a ticket are asked not to even show up at the airport on Wednesday, as they will most likely not find an open counter to serve them.
The potential consequences for the group’s subsidiary airlines still remain unclear. Austrian Airlines said it was canceling a total of 18 flights to and from Frankfurt or Munich on Wednesday and another on Thursday, but otherwise the strike action is not affecting its routes. Another subsidiary, Condor, does not seem to be affected as, as its representative states, “on the ground it does not cooperate with Lufthansa”. The German News Agency (dpa) talks about possible flight cancellations at the subsidiary airlines Swiss and Air Dolomiti, while it estimates that EuroWings routes will not be affected.
Confrontation with unions
Lufthansa’s personnel director, Michael Niegermann, called the strike “excessive” after just two days of negotiations. As he characteristically states, “this escalation causes great damage, especially for our customers at the height of the tourist season, while at the same time burdening our partners at a difficult time for air transport”. Speaking to Bild, Harry Homeister, a member of Lufthansa’s management board, claims that Ver.di “with the strike destroys the dream of a holiday at the height of the season”. The company’s management claims that it has offered 6% increases to workers who already earn more than 6,500 euros gross per month. For their part, the unions speak of “distortion of reality”. The next round of negotiations with Lufthansa management is scheduled for next Wednesday in Frankfurt.
Jeanine Wisler
The strike mobilization at Lufthansa is also causing political reactions in Berlin. The vice president of K.O. of the Christian Democrats (CDU) Ulrich Lange states that “the autonomy of the social partners is valuable and politicians should not interfere in a negotiation between employers and trade unions, but the autonomy of the social partners also presupposes a sense of responsibility, which I do not see exists”, to add meaningfully that “today Lufthansa would not even exist without taxpayers’ money. The strike is ruining the holidays of those who have saved Lufthansa jobs with their money.” For her part, Janine Whistler, head of the Left Party (Die Linke) welcomes the strike. “Working conditions for ground staff are harsh and pay is poor,” Wisler told AFP. “Ver.di’s demand for 9.5% increases is not excessive when inflation is hovering around 8%.”
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