For the pilot and president of the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union, Stefan Herth, the current wage dispute with Deutsche Lufthansa is not about his own salary.

Herth professionally steers long-haul aircraft for the Condor company.

But for the trade union official Herth, it is the first major conflict in office.

And the disputes over the cockpits of the Lufthansa core brand, where the top German earners in the profession work, have always been considered the supreme discipline among VC conflicts.

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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Herth ran for election in 2021 with a group of pilots called "Team Change".

He narrowly won the presidential nomination with 54 percent of the votes.

A core task for the three-year term of office should be to make the union more cohesive.

Because in pilot circles it ferments.

Roughly speaking, the pilots of the core brand Lufthansa, whose possible strike has just been voted on, are in the VC on the one hand.

On the other hand, there are pilots from other airlines - including several subsidiaries of the Lufthansa Group - who get less salary.

The top earners, who have historically dominated union activity, fear an industry-wide downward spiral if they make big concessions.

Lufthansa has long since reacted by founding new operating units with their own remuneration structure - Eurowings Discover operates holiday flights, and the next step is the "Cityline 2" project for feeder flights to Frankfurt.

The union as a whole is alarmed, fearing that Lufthansa wants to play wage commissions off against each other.

In the meantime, the group management is wrinkling its nose because the body that only negotiates the salaries for pilots of the core brand is still called the group collective bargaining committee for historical reasons.

A sign of the new unity of the VC should be a new round in which the negotiators from three tariff commissions for all pilot groups in the Lufthansa Group coordinate.

After his election, Herth had promised new cooperation between the board and collective bargaining committees and more transparency.

Previously, the VC board had even intervened against the status of a commission.

He wanted to create "new trust", Herth asserted.

The first major conflict of his term of office is now the first stress test of how he can reconcile collective bargaining and internal reconciliation.

Because the conflict again affects the pilots of the core brand.

As a precaution, the union declared: "We now need a modern and fair, internationally competitive remuneration structure in all professional groups."