The vida union has been negotiating with the AUA since October about ending the employee savings package and an appropriate salary adjustment for cabin crew – without success. Now another labor dispute is looming. The union has called for working meetings at Vienna-Schwechat airport. These are scheduled for March 7. Delays and cancellations of flights cannot be ruled out.
Following the AUA’s “unexpectedly good result” in the summer and the early repayment of the state-guaranteed loan for the time of the pandemic, the union has called for new collective bargaining under these amended terms. There have been ten rounds of talks since October. Trade union and works council Bord are not satisfied with AUA’s earlier offer.
What the company offers
At the airline, “the behavior of the BRB (works council, note) is incomprehensible”, according to a letter from the AUA board to employees. According to this, the AUA wants to pay seven percent inflation compensation from May and retroactively increase the starting salaries of flight attendants from 1 January 2023 to 2000 euros gross per month. Moreover, the end of the wage exemption had been introduced since January, so two years earlier than originally agreed. “We also plan to end the remaining parts of the crisis package for our employees in May. We want to pay pension fund contributions in full again, take over the cleaning of uniforms and provide water in the hotel rooms,” the AUA letter said on Wednesday.
Excitement about bonus payments
Seven percent from May equates to just over 4.5 percent for the whole of 2023, the Bord works council criticizes, according to a post in the online edition of the “Kurier”. That was “in no way appropriate given galloping inflation, which is now in the double digits”. In addition, the Board of Directors omitted essentials, such as the reintroduction of on-board catering for long-term missions. The union also criticizes that AUA now wants to pay bonuses again. “The bizarre thing is that these payments are based on the turnover of the previous year. At that point, however, employees were still on short-time work and had to forgo a significant portion of their income to save the AUA,” said Daniel Liebhart, president of vida’s aviation division.
The AUA sees it differently: “We know that these topics are often very controversial, but we have a clear position here. The variable salary components are part of the individual contracts of our managers, which we, like the entire Group, must and will fulfill again,’ said the management in the letter to the employees.
Source: Krone
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