Pilots at Germany’s Eurowings airline are to stage a one-day strike on October 6 in a dispute over work hours and rest periods, the pilot’s union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) announced on Tuesday night with little more than a day’s notice of the impending walkout.
The walkout at Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary will begin at the stroke of midnight on Thursday and will officially end at 11:59 pm the same day.
The union accused Eurowings management of failing to engage with them in negotiations. The two sides have met for talks on at least ten separate occasions, but no progress has so far been made.
Two of those rounds of talks were held after Eurowings pilots authorised a walkout, but the VC says the mere threat of a walkout did little for negotiations.
“We are open to discussions on how we can achieve long-term reasonable working hours for the employees at Eurowings,” commented Marcel Gröls, the union’s chairman of the tariff commission.
“So far, however, it has not been possible to agree on a common path with the employer. It is not enough to sit at the negotiating table – you also have to have the will to solve and not present counterclaims as an offer,” Gröls complained.
The VC union accuses Eurowings of regularly pushing pilots to work up to the absolute maximum number of hours allowed under European law. Those laws, known as ‘flight time limitations’, are designed to reduce the risk of fatigue, but many pilots are highly critical of how some airlines see FTL limits as a target to reach.
They want time off? They got it. They are on strike.
What they want is more pay for their work or same pay for less work. That is a value judgment that they have to decide.