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Empty seats in a Lufthansa jet: for the time being no layoffs among the ground staff, but no Christmas bonus
Photo: DANIEL ROLAND / AFP
In the struggle for savings contributions from employees in the corona crisis, Lufthansa has reached an agreement with the Ver.di union.
According to this, around 35,000 land workers will have to forego part of their wages and will be protected against layoffs until the end of March 2022.
The terms of extensive partial retirement and severance pay programs were also agreed upon at the agreement.
According to Ver.di, the agreement is still subject to a member survey.
The airline and the union had argued for months about lowering wage costs and downsizing among ground staff.
The negotiations had been broken off several times.
Lufthansa is already withholding this year's Christmas bonus
Land workers feel the measures directly.
According to Lufthansa, the current Christmas bonus has already been withheld.
The co-payments for short-time work allowances are also to be canceled.
Overall, there is a potential savings of more than 200 million euros, as both sides confirmed.
The parties want to speak early about further austerity measures from 2022.
"We must not let up in our work on crisis management measures in order to find good solutions for our employees even after the end of short-time work," said Lufthansa HR Director Michael Niggemann.
"After tough negotiations, we have achieved an initial result that offers prospects, ensures effective employee protection and Lufthansa flushes 200 million euros in contributions that the employees bear. Now Lufthansa has to deal responsibly with this employee loan," said the deputy Ver.di chairwoman Christine Behle.
Agreement with the pilots union is still pending
Lufthansa had previously agreed on the cornerstones of a long-term agreement with the cabin union UFO.
An agreement over the current year is still pending with the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC).
The VC had submitted further proposals on Wednesday which, according to their calculations, would save Lufthansa around 450 million euros.
The approximately 5000 pilots of the Lufthansa core company are threatened with redundancies of up to 1100 colleagues if they fail to reach an agreement from the second quarter of 2021.
According to its own information, Lufthansa has already initiated corresponding negotiations with the works councils for the social plan and balance of interests.
So far, the VC and the company have only agreed on a short-term restructuring collective agreement for the current year, which, according to the union, has already saved around 150 million euros.
Among other things, increases in short-time work allowance and subsidies for company pensions as well as a wage increase were canceled.
Like the entire aviation industry, Lufthansa was hit hard by the corona pandemic and is traveling with a significantly limited range of flights.
After three quarters, the company rescued by the state has already posted a loss of 5.6 billion euros in the current year and needs fresh money.
In the long term, only around 100,000 of the 124,000 positions will remain.
During the crisis, the German state supported the airline with an aid package worth nine billion euros.
The Federal Republic is now the largest shareholder in the airline.
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fek / dpa / Reuters