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Strike over: Swedish SAS pilots ready to fly again

Scandinavian airline SAS announced Tuesday that pilots have agreed to end a strike which disrupted hundreds of flights involving some 100,000 passengers over five days.

Published: 14 June 2016 17:16 CEST
Updated: 14 June 2016 22:11 CEST

Strike over: Swedish SAS pilots ready to fly again

Photo: SAS/Scanpix

“The parties have agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement and all flights in Sweden will resume as soon as possible,” the company's statement said.

Around 400 pilots based at Stockholm's Arlanda airport went on strike on Friday led by their SPF labour union, which was locked for months in bitter pay negotiations with management.

The deal to end the strike includes a 2.2 percent pay increase according to SAS, which gave no further details about the accord. The pilots had asked for a 3.5 percent raise.

“We had hoped for more, but we succeeded nevertheless to get a new pay scale for young pilots. They now have much better salaries,” Peter Larsson, union head for SAS pilots told the Swedish news agency TT.

Since the start of the strike some 1,000 domestic and European flights have been cancelled.

SAS flights should get back to normal in the next few days, the airline said.

At the Arlanda international airport, SAS had provided big screens showing football matches from the Euro 2016 in France.

Many fans had to abandon plans to travel to the Ireland-Sweden match on Monday at the Stade de France outside Paris — which ended in a 1-1 draw — or had to hastily make alternative arrangements.

SAS had refused the pay increase sought by the pilots' union, saying it would swell the airline's costs by an intolerable 6.5-10 percent.

The damaging strike came during peak travel season, and hit charter groups hard.

SAS, which is 50-percent owned by the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian states, has said it did not calculate how much money it was losing because of the strike, but financial analysts estimated it was costing the airline at least $1.2 million a day.

SAS has come under increasing pressure in recent years from low-cost rivals including Scandinavia-based Norwegian, Europe's third-largest budget airline.

While SAS returned to profit in 2015, it managed net earnings of only 171 million kronor ($20.6 million) in the second quarter of this year despite low fuel costs due to fierce competition and exchange rate swings.

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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