Ground staff on strike: Warning strike at Lufthansa – first flight cancellations

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Frankfurt Airport: Empty terminal as a result of the ground staff strike

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Helmut Fricke/dpa

Ver.di is continuing its dispute in the tariff dispute with Lufthansa: The company's second warning strike by ground staff has begun. The airline expects hundreds of flight cancellations and more than 100,000 passengers to be affected. The company has already canceled a number of connections at its most important hub in Frankfurt on Monday evening. Only a few intercontinental flights should still take place.

On Monday evening, Lufthansa employees in technology, logistics, freight and IT went on warning strike, as Ver.di strike leader Marvin Reschinsky confirmed. The ground staff at the Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart locations will follow on Tuesday at 4 a.m.

The airline wants to get ten to 20 percent of its planned program of around 1,000 flights into the air on Tuesday. During the first wave of warning strikes almost two weeks ago, around 900 flights were canceled and more than 100,000 passengers had to reschedule. Lufthansa warned the passengers of canceled flights: They should not come to the airport because the rebooking counters there were not staffed, according to the information systems (you can read what air travelers now need to know here).

The pilots' strike at the Lufthansa subsidiary Discover went much more smoothly, which only had to cancel a single Mallorca flight in Frankfurt. According to a company spokesman, the first solidarity strike by the Cockpit Association on Lufthansa's long-haul flights was completely absorbed. All four takeoffs of the Lufthansa sub-fleet on strike with the Boeing 787 were possible without restrictions on Monday.

Negotiations will continue on Wednesday

The background to the ground staff's warning strike is the group-wide collective wage negotiations for, according to Ver.di, around 25,000 employees on the ground - including at Deutsche Lufthansa, Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa Cargo, Lufthansa Technik Logistik Services, Lufthansa Engineering and Operational Services and other group companies. Lufthansa speaks of around 20,000 employees.

Collective bargaining is scheduled to continue on Wednesday. Verdi described the second wave of warning strikes as necessary because Lufthansa had made no move to improve its existing offer in the previous negotiations.

sol/dpa