Lufthansa salaries: "Dealing with taxpayer money is difficult to convey"

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Nobody from the governing parties wants to comment on the explosive issue, but criticism from the opposition is even more pronounced.

The reason for the excitement: Lufthansa is using the billion-dollar loans that were granted to it by the state and thus by taxpayers to save pilots.

“People from the retail trade or gastronomy who have lost their jobs because of the Corona measures no longer understand the world.

How can it be that the state takes the air to breathe the middle class and on the other hand finances lavish salaries in the subsidized aviation industry? ”Said Alice Weidel, chairman of the AfD in the Bundestag, WELT.

She thinks the signal that Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr is sending is devastating.

FDP parliamentary group vice Michael Theurer sees all measure lost.

"In view of the fact that many self-employed and medium-sized companies do not receive help, it is difficult to convey how Lufthansa deals with taxpayer money," he said.

Apparently there is a very different understanding of what is reasonable and what is not.

Up to 15,000 euros for pilots on short-time work

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Lufthansa boss Spohr had confirmed to WELT AM SONNTAG for the first time that the monthly short-time allowance for ex-A380 captains would be increased to up to 15,000 euros and demanded understanding.

With the pure short-time work allowance, the “basic monthly pay would otherwise be more than halved” because a large part of the salary is above the income threshold.

“We cannot and do not want to expect our pilots to do that,” said Spohr.

Only the salary up to the income threshold is included in the calculation of the short-time work allowance.

The limit this year is 6900 euros in the west and 6450 euros in the east.

The total will rise to 7100 euros (west) and 6700 euros (east) in the coming year.

Depending on the duration of the short-time work and whether they have children or not, employees receive between 60 percent and 87 percent of the lost net wages as short-time work allowance.

The lavish additional payments for pilots also met with criticism in the ranks of the opposition parties because the use of state aid was already heavily discussed in the spring when the economic stabilization fund was passed.

While the SPD demanded far-reaching interventions in the company's business policy, in the end it was only possible to agree that the funds should not be used to pay bonuses, share packages or other gratuities to top managers of companies that rely on state aid.

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This does not include high increases in short-time allowance for pilots.

Whether the financial situation of the pilots, especially those who have earned well in recent years, makes such a step necessary, can at least be doubted.

Especially since, from the point of view of industry observers, the difficult job market does not make it absolutely necessary that the pilots are kept happy with generous bonuses so that they do not switch to another airline.

Source: WORLD infographic

AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel believes it is imperative that the federal government's rescue policy returns to the principles of the social market economy, "in which the citizens who are in need are supported and competition is not distorted by state intervention in the market process" .

In view of the huge austerity program within the group, the increase to up to 15,000 euros is unlikely to please everyone, not only among opposition politicians, but also in the ranks of Lufthansa.

Like all aviation, Lufthansa is suffering from the travel restrictions in the pandemic.

Carsten Spohr does not expect the number of passengers to return to the level before the pandemic in the coming years.

“We are realistically assuming that we will have up to ten percent fewer passengers in the middle of the decade than in the pre-Corona period,” said the CEO of WELT AM SONNTAG.

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The airline was saved from collapse with a billion-dollar federal rescue package.

"In December we had less than ten percent of the passengers compared to the previous year, but still ten billion euros available liquidity at the end of the year," said Spohr.

"This is primarily due to the fact that we were able to reduce costs significantly faster than planned".

The manager pointed out that 29,000 employees will leave the group by the end of the year, around every fifth Lufthansa employee.

"So that as few employees as possible have to leave the company, we are striving for intelligent part-time models." The goal is to keep 100,000 employees at Lufthansa.

But that could not be full-time jobs in all areas.

Distress sales are currently not an issue.

"There are no plans to sell Austrian Airlines," said Spohr.

Of the nine billion euros from the four home countries of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, “we have only called up three billion euros so far and haven't spent much of it yet,” said Spohr.

In November, the airline was also able to go public again itself.

The further development in business will show "how much we really need of the nine billion euros".

There are no signs of a new financial crisis in 2021.

An agreement has now been reached with the approximately 5,000 pilots that they will be protected from redundancies for operational reasons until the end of March 2022. The airline and the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) agreed on a crisis collective agreement. In return, Lufthansa can extend short-time working until the end of next year, cut working hours with corresponding wage cuts and suspend wage increases.