Cabin staff at German airline Lufthansa will begin their strike action tomorrow (31 August 2012), the workers' union has said. The UFO union and the airline have been at loggerheads over the past year, over pay and working conditions.
The UFO declined to reveal where the strikes would take place, but said it would give six hours' notice. It’s expected that strikes could cause disruption to hundreds of flights.
"We do not want to give
Lufthansa the opportunity to prepare for the strike by getting replacement crews ready," UFO head Nicoley Baublies told Reuters.
Lufthansa has previously said it would seek to keep disruptions to a minimum by using
cabin crew who were not part of the union or by drafting staff from other units.
The union is seeking a pay increase of 5% for cabin staff for 15 months starting from January this year, after three years of no increases. The latest offer from Lufthansa's was for a pay increase of about 3.5%.
Baublies has also said that the airline has not assured that its staff will not be transferred to a cheaper contract if they move to a low-cost airline in the airline group.
Lufthansa has about 19,000 cabin crew and the UFO union represents about two-thirds of them.
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Photo: Deutsche Lufthansa AG