Monday, 07 September 2015

Lufthansa rejects VC’s offer for cost reduction

At the beginning of September representatives of Vereinigung Cockpit (VC, German ALPA) met with Lufthansa management, including Lufthansa-CEO Carsten Spohr. Subject of this meeting was VC’s offer for an alliance for employment and growth made at the end of July. In this meeting, Lufthansa rejected VC’s offer. Such an alliance was proposed by Lufthansa last February and VC has agreed to reduce costs by more than 500 mill. € under the condition that aircraft and pilots will not be transferred to low cost subsidiaries in Germany and abroad.

Rejecting savings of more than half a billion Euros is a clear sign to VC, that Lufthansa is not interested in solving the present conflict with its pilots but instead continues to outsource jobs. VC is extremely disappointed by this decision. In early July, an attempt to solve the current conflict by an arbitration failed as well. Thus, VC is feeling the need to tackle each issue separately and with more emphasis. Against this background VC has still declared negotiations for a new collective labour agreement regarding transitional pension schemes to have failed. Hence, industrial action at Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and Germanwings has become more likely.