TRADE unions representing Air France workers have threatened to ground more flights in September as a pay dispute with the airline’s bosses continues. Air France unions have been holding strike actions since February in a bid to earn pay rises across the board.
The 15 days of strikes held between February and June will cost the airline 300 million euros and saw the CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac resign after a staff vote aimed at ending the industrial action backfired. The strikes also prompted the Macron government’s economy minister to warn that the future of the airline was at stake.
Air France had offered staff a general wage increase of seven percent over four years from 2018 to 2021 in addition to the individual increases of around one percent in 2018. However unions have been demanding an immediate wage increase of 5.1 per cent, after initially demanding a six per cent rise.
With no deal in sight unions have threatened more strikes even if Air France do not name a new permanent CEO. A statement on behalf of unions of pilots (SNPL, Spaf, Alter), ground staff (CGT, FO, SUD) and air stewards (SNPNC, Unsa-PNC, CFTC, SNGAF) said: ‘With or without a CEO, from the month of September, to avoid penalising our summer passengers, the conflict over salaries will restart. ‘Only a (satisfactory) agreement will end it.’
The statement continued: ‘The hasty departure of Mr Janaillac highlighted the structural weakness of our organisation. ‘The administrative council does not know how to get over this crisis situation.’
It added that no ‘plan of succession’ to Janaillac had been planned by the Air France management, even though the former CEO had been open about his plans to leave should his proposals fall through.
Air France-KLM named new leaders last Tuesday following Jean-Marc Janaillac’s sudden exit. Air France-KLM named chief financial officer Frederic Gagey as its interim CEO. Former French minister Anne-Marie Couderc was named non-executive chairman.
Gagey, 61, will sit on a new management committee alongside Franck Terner and Pieter Elbers, CEOs of the French and Dutch operations respectively, who will act as his deputies. But the board indicated that the temporary CEO will not have a mandate to find a way out of the pay dispute.
‘Regarding the ongoing labour dispute… the Air France CEO does not have a new mandate to take decisions that would jeopardise the growth strategy approved by the Air France-KLM board of directors,’ a statement said.
Meanwhile, train strikes are set to continue into August, as unions stand firm.
Laurent Brun, general secretary of CGT Cheminots rail union, announced that strike dates would ‘probably’ continue until the rentrée in September. He said that the strike has ‘no end point in sight, because we do not have the guarantees that we have been asking for since the beginning’.
Brun added that the strike was the ‘responsibility of the government’, as it ‘remains unrelenting’ on the status of the disputed historical SNCF worker contracts that the government’s new propsals seek to replace.
• Certainly, Deliveroo couriers in Bordeaux need to be extra vigilant during the summer!
Last year, it was at the same time that the management of the meal delivery platform Deliveroo unilaterally changed the contracts of ‘its’ bike deliverymen, and imposed payment for the job. This year, another attack: the platform Deliveroo decides, always unilaterally, to modify its pricing and to invoice the jobs according to the demand: thus, during periods of strong activity, the courier could get double if the demand is low.
But the majority of full-time, auto-entrepreneured couriers expect a drop in their pay, and the endorsement offered to them does not guarantee any official minimum. About thirty members of the union of couriers CGT Gironde (first trade union of the French bicycle couriers, created in February 2017), gathered on Tuesday in front of the Bordeaux premises of the company, to protest against this measure.
• Meanwhile Ryanair has signed its third cabin crew union recognition agreement with the Verdi Union to represent directly employed cabin crew based in Germany. Ryanair’s chief people officer Eddie Wilson said the deal brought the proportion of cabin crew now covered by recognition agreements to over 60%.
The airline already has cabin crew recognition agreements in place with Italy’s ANPAC/ANPAV unions and Unite in the UK. Ryanair is on a collision course with the airline’s UK regulator over its decision to reject compensation claims amid a pilots’ strike. The low-cost airline claimed it did not need to compensate customers as it cancelled hundreds of flights due to a strike by pilots and cabin crew across Europe.
The budget airline claimed the disruption was caused by the ‘unreasonable’ behaviour of unions.
It argued it should not have to pay compensation for this reason as it was an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ and therefore it isn’t liable. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) disagrees and thinks Ryanair should pay 250 euros (£222) to customers in line with EU law around compensation if short-haul flights are cancelled within two weeks of departure.
More than 600 flights were cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday as cabin crews in Belgium, Spain and Portugal went on strike over pay and conditions. The carrier is also facing more strikes by its Irish pilots over similar concerns. It threatened to cut 300 jobs among its Irish pilots and crews after they staged a third 24-hour strike on Tuesday. More than 100,000 customers who have been affected have been offered other flights or received refunds.
• The German construction workers union IG BAU has reached an agreement with the construction company Hochtief that will give construction workers a pay rise of 7.14% in three stages until 2020. Negotiations were tough and despite great economic developments with profits expected to increase with 15 per cent this year, Hochtief was at first not willing to increase the salary of their workers.
It is also the first time that all Hochtief workers will receive the same pay rate across Germany. Previously the company has had separate agreements for workers in the East and West. ‘This is a historic agreement as it is nationwide and applies equally to all Hochtief workers in the country,’ said Dietmar Schäfers from IG BAU who is also BWI’s deputy President.
‘So Hochtief pays more as in the collective agreement for Construction in Germany!’
From May this year workers will get a pay rise of 4 per cent that will be paid out retroactively, then 2 per cent in 2019 and an additional 1 per cent in 2020.