» » Air France Pilots End Two-Week Strike

Air France Pilots End Two-Week Strike

Posted by Unknown on Sunday, September 28, 2014

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International Business |Air France Pilots End Two-Week Strike



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PARIS — The union representing thousands of striking Air France pilots said on Sunday that it had “decided to accept its responsibilities” and end a crippling two-week strike, although it stopped short of accepting management’s plans for expanding a low-cost subsidiary.


A new round of negotiations overnight ended early Sunday “with a text that does not suit us,” the French National Union of Airline Pilots said in a statement to Agence France-Presse. The union, which represents nearly three-quarters of the 3,800 Air France pilots, said it was ending its walkout in order to “pursue discussions under more serene conditions.”


An Air France spokesman was not immediately available to comment and it was not clear when normal flight service would resume. The strike has grounded more than half of the airline’s flights since the walkout began on Sept. 15, and has cost its struggling French-Dutch parent, Air France-KLM, as much as 20 million euros, or $25.4 million, per day.


Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, immediately welcomed the end to the walkout, which he described as “too long” and “misunderstood.” He stressed that the French government, which owns a 16 percent stake in the airline, would “stand by the company and its employees, who were plunged into uncertainty by this episode.” Mr. Valls had stepped up pressure on the pilots in recent days to return to work. He rejected an appeal by union leaders for the government to appoint an independent mediator.


“A solution to end the conflict is on the table,” Mr. Valls said late Friday. “It is up to the pilots to seize it.”


The pilots walked off the job to protest Air France-KLM’s strategy to develop its low-budget subsidiary, Transavia, into a leading European budget carrier that would directly compete against larger regional rivals like Ryanair and easyJet. The pilots said they were concerned that the plan, which involved up to €1 billion in new investment in dozens of new planes and the hiring of hundreds of pilots, would eventually lead to lower wages and longer working hours for the group’s French pilots. Air France pilots fly significantly fewer hours per year than the maximum allowed under European regulations.


In order to calm those fears, Air France-KLM last week offered a major concession by abandoning a key element of its strategy that would have based up to one-third of Transavia’s new planes and employees in lower-wage European countries like Portugal. However, management has refused to agree to the union’s demand for uniform working conditions and pay scales for all pilots across the Air France-KLM group, arguing that Transavia could not compete with established low-cost carriers without significantly lowering its operating costs, including wage costs.


Under the terms of its latest proposal, submitted to unions on Friday, Air France-KLM said it was prepared to hire as many as 1,000 new employees for Transavia, including 250 pilots, over the coming two to three years and was ready to begin expanding Transavia in France as early as next summer. The investment plan includes the addition of around three dozen new Boeing 737 single-aisle jets to Transavia’s French fleet.


Management said no Air France pilots would be required to fly for Transavia, whose pilots fly longer hours for less pay. But the company said those who volunteered to do so would accumulate flight hours, and therefore seniority, more quickly than at Air France, placing them in line for earlier promotion within the group.



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