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Lufthansa jets in Munich: clear majority in favour of collective bargaining agreement

Photo: CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP

Many Lufthansa passengers are likely to breathe a sigh of relief, as renewed pilot strikes at the airline are unlikely to be an issue by the end of 2026. The regular pilots of the Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo companies have accepted the negotiated collective agreement, as the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union announced. 65.5 percent of the voting members voted in favor of the agreement.

According to Lufthansa's internal account, the approximately 5200 pilots will receive at least 18 percent more money in several stages over the next three years. Together with two flat-rate increases from the previous year, salary increases of 25 to 50 percent over the total term of four and a half years, depending on the classification, would result. A one-off payment of 3000 euros was also agreed.

More significant are additional agreements on working hours and on-call times in the collective bargaining agreement, as well as the abolition of a second collective bargaining track, which was introduced years ago for newcomers. A solution is also being adopted for 150 captains of the subsidiary Germanwings, which was hired in 2020 and who will move to the parent company Lufthansa in their previous role. For this, around 550 Lufthansa pilots will receive financial compensation because they can later be promoted to captain.

Dispute over low-cost brand

For the time being, it remains unclear how the short feeder flights to the Frankfurt and Munich hubs will be organized in the future. The Lufthansa Group has founded a new airline "City Airlines", which is to do this at lower costs than the Lufthansa core company itself has been able to do so far. The company wants to agree on the tariffs of the city pilots with the VC, which has always resisted such a shift in previous negotiations.

The union's collective bargaining committee had left the decision to the members concerned and had already declared a good two weeks ago that no better result could be achieved through negotiations. This means that in the collective bargaining round that has now been concluded, there will be a warning strike day on September 2, 2022, when the entire flight operations of the parent brand had been stopped.

mic/dpa-AFX