2024-08-22 16:26:26
The unions are at loggerheads at the Lufthansa subsidiary Discover. The staff want to go on strike because of a collective agreement with Verdi.
At Lufthansa’s holiday airline Discover, the signs point to a strike. In separate ballots, members of the Ufo and Vereinigung Cockpit unions voted in favor of industrial action. A strike date was not announced on Wednesday.
The two trade unions for pilots and flight attendants are working closely together to make parallel, existing collective agreements between the rival union Verdi and the company superfluous. Instead, they each want to implement their own collective agreement.
“The Basic Law gives the employees of a company the right to decide for themselves who will represent them. The members of the Cockpit Association have decided by a clear majority that they will not accept the employers’ side concluding collective agreements with a union of their choice over their heads,” explains VC collective bargaining expert Marcel Gröls.
At Ufo, 91.8 percent of participants voted for industrial action. Among the Discover pilots from VC, the figure was 81 percent, according to the union.
Following the approval of the affected members, indefinite strikes are now possible on Discover Airlines flights. The company will start with 27 aircraft from Munich and Frankfurt to holiday destinations in Europe and overseas. The fleet is expected to grow to 33 aircraft by mid-2027, the company announced.
For tactical reasons, the unions are not giving any details about the industrial action. All that is clear at the moment is that pilots and flight attendants want to coordinate their actions. The unions also did not want to rule out solidarity strikes at the much larger Lufthansa.