Ground staff at Europe’s largest air transport group, Lufthansa, are calling for a strike on Tuesday at Germany’s main airports to demand salary increases from management to compensate for inflation.
The Verdi union calls strikes between Tuesday at 4:00 and Wednesday at 7:10 at the airports of “Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne-Bonn and Stuttgart,” it announced this Sunday in a statement. . “Flight cancellations and significant delays are likely,” according to the union, which represents almost 25,000 of these employees.
A previous strike in early February was very successful and caused the cancellation of almost 90% of the flights initially planned by the group. This announcement comes after the failure of the third round of price negotiations between Lufthansa management and worker representatives. Verdi demands a 12.5% salary increase, with at least 500 euros more immediately in the monthly payroll and an inflation compensation bonus of 3,000 euros. The objective is to compensate for the inflation of recent years in Germany, which reached 5.9% last year, after 6.9% in 2022.
Strike wave
The company, for its part, proposes a 4% increase in December, before a 5.5% increase in February 2025. Too little, according to Verdi. “While the group gives its pilots double-digit raises (…), the ground staff does not even receive compensation for inflation,” lamented Marvin Reschinsky, who negotiates on behalf of the union.
In fact, Lufthansa pilots last August won pay increases of more than 17% in total, ending a months-long price dispute with management. Pilots at Discover, the group’s leisure subsidiary, are also on strike from Saturday to Monday to demand the introduction of a pay scale and regulations on flight missions and rest times.
Germany is facing a wave of strikes that especially affect the transport sector, but also industry and services, where employees consider the proposed wage increases insufficient given the increase in prices from 2022.
Source: BFM TV
