Lufthansa and UFO strike: The union is all about survival

The cabin union UFO has been fighting a strike at Lufthansa about a dozen times in recent months threatened - now she is serious. Finally, one could almost say. For six hours she wants to call her members at the traffic hubs in Frankfurt and Munich this Sunday for a temporary warning strike, from six in the morning until late in the morning.

It is the culmination of a more than a year-long confrontation between the group and the small but belligerent union. It is about mobbing, alleged self-enrichment of UFO officials and prosecutorial investigations against about a dozen incumbent or former board members or employees of the organization. With reference to these allegations, the Lufthansa leadership has been refusing to bargain for months with the incumbent UFO leadership, and calls for a new start. Even daughters such as Eurowings or the Sun Express subsidiary operated together with Turkish Airlines are silent.

Now it could come to the showdown, and that's not such bad news, not even for the customers. Employees at Lufthansa, Eurowings, Sun Express, Cityline and the former Germanwings have been hanging in the air for months on their working conditions, possible salary increases and part-time or retirement arrangements. They have become hostages in a conflict for which they are least able to do so.

The mood, says a Lufthansa-Purser, who has been there for more than 20 years, has never been so lousy with the flight attendants of the group. The strike call of the UFO for Sunday could turn out to be a clever move - and contribute to the clarification of the situation.

Consciously taken the sunday

The union would have been able to choose a weekday and make business travelers, the core clientele of Lufthansa, sensitive. But she deliberately opted for the Sunday, which is mostly private travelers on the road, for a kind of exit light. You could also consider it as a last offer to give in.

But the group leadership slammed the offer last Friday:

• They will not publish an emergency flight plan, but try to offer all connections with the help of volunteers, the Lufthansa threatened the UFO.
• In addition, they will claim damages and reduce the salary of all flight attendants who remain at home, despite having been assigned to the service plan.
• Also legal steps against each individual one wants to examine.

Strong Tobacco. Whether CEO Carsten Spohr and his colleagues are really serious, should be evident in the next few days. If they want to stop what they consider to be an inadmissible strike at the last moment, they would actually have to apply for a restraining order, as they have repeatedly practiced in the past.

It is quite possible that they will not do this this time around and just let things go - in the hope that the already insecure shipboard workers will appear on duty for fear of consequences.

One thing is already clear: it remains exciting, and no later than next Sunday at noon, it is likely to be clear who has the better cards in the poker game. The risk for the UFO is great: If she does not succeed in gathering her own troops behind her, she may eventually become superfluous herself.