Lufthansa’s Staff strike during peak travel season continues

Lufthansa officials said its flights were proceeding normally at airports across Germany Monday, July 27, hours after cabin and ground staff began a strike for more pay. Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walther told national public television ZDF shortly after 7 a.m. local time that around 100 flights had taken off with at worst short delays. He called on the large services union Verdi to return to talks with Germany’s largest airline.

Verdi officials, who initially focused on the airports in Frankfurt and Hamburg, said their main aim was not to cause cancellations but to hit the company financially. It is demanding a substantial pay rise for 50,000 workers.

Lufthansa officials meanwhile said they had taken emergency measures, transferring passengers to other flights, shifting staff to cover gaps and possibly using the catering services of other airlines. It added that the tickets of domestic passengers could be used on the national rail network.

Pilots were not involved in the strike. In a separate strike, pilots at two Lufthansa subsidiaries came out on strike for 36 hours last week, causing 900 flights to be cancelled.

It is the first unlimited strike in 13 years at Lufthansa, and union officials said would affect all support areas — from catering and cargo to maintenance and repair staff. Some 91 percent of union members voted to strike, Verdi said on Friday.

“Our strike is not aimed at passengers — our goal is to put financial pressure on the company,” said Verdi spokesman Harald Reutter on Sunday in comments aimed at defusing public anger. “It’s up to Lufthansa to decide how many flights are canceled.”

The union plans walkouts at Germany’s 10 largest airports — Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Hanover, Leipzig and Bremen. But it has limited it initially to the two, perhaps in hopes that an agreement could be reached before the labor action becomes more disruptive. Lufthansa said the company expected only a fraction of employees to follow the union’s call for strike action. The union, however, has insisted it was meeting with strong support by Lufthansa employees. “We have a wave of new membership entries, which we can hardly keep up with,” said Verdi official Gerhard Straube.