Plagued by continuous strike action over the past two years, on Wednesday 02 December, Lufthansa invited the three unions that are established within the company; Verdi (ground staff), Ufo (flight attendants), and Cockpit (pilots), to meet with management and to contribute to a ‘Job Summit’ with the aim of finding an ultimate solution to the long running conflict. This invitation marks a departure since Lufthansa normally negotiates with each of the three unions separately. At the end of the meeting that was set to address job security and the company pension scheme, all the parties declared, in a joint statement, that they wished to further deepen their ‘cooperation, mutual trust, and communication’. The airline company is looking to quickly sign with both corporatist unions, Ufo and Cockpit, a collective agreement similar to the one signed four days before the summit with the Verdi union.
“The ‘Job Summit’ quickly changed into the ‘Trust Summit’,”congratulated Bettina Volkens, Head of Lufthansa Personnel, at the close of the meeting, without divulging any details of the negotiations. “Collective negotiations will now take place in an atmosphere of trust’ and that will be completely confidential,” she added. This summit meeting has been long awaited, because the German airline, which is undergoing a wide-ranging cost cutting program to try and compete with low-cost carriers,...
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