Lufthansa Strike Starts to Bite

As ground and cabin crew enter their third day of a strike against Lufthansa, the airline has had to cancel some international flights

On the third day of a strike by ground and cabin crew, German national airline Lufthansa cancelled a handful of international flights and sought to avert another labor union from striking against the company.

On Wednesday, a Lufthansa spokesman said eight international flights had been cancelled along with 70 short-haul flights within Germany and Europe that have been cancelled daily since the strike commenced on Monday morning. The cancellations included flights between the airline's Frankfurt hub and New York, Calgary and Calcutta, as well as one flight from Munich and Chicago.

The airline said it anticipated additional cancellations of at least 10 flights from Munich and five from Hamburg. In total, the flights currently cancelled account for about 4 percent of the airline's total flight capacity, company spokeswoman Amelie Lorenz said Wednesday.

The open-ended strike began at midnight Sunday with strikes at airports in Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne and Hanover. After strikes there failed to cause major disruptions to the airline, the strike was expanded Tuesday to include airports in Berlin, Stuttgart and Nuremberg. "As of Tuesday evening, all Lufthansa locations in Germany have become involved in the wage dispute," a union representative announced Wednesday.

In some ground services—such as in-flight catering and passenger check-in—the airline has been able to replace some of its striking members or buy in the services of rival companies. Union representatives attribute the increased effect of the strike not only to its geographical expansion, but also to the fact that more members of the airline's technical staff are joining the effort. "Aircraft maintenance is Lufthansa's Achilles heel," a union representative said Tuesday.

The strike has been called by the Ver.di service union, which wants to secure a 9.8-percent increase in pay for the roughly 50,000 ground staff and cabin crew members it represents. The union has rejected Lufthansa's offer of a 6.7-percent increase over a 21-month period and a one-time bonus payment.

Despite the obvious pay dispute, German labor market analysts believe that the strike is more about union influence than about wages. Ver.di has been losing members in the airline industry to other unions. In Germany, most pilots are now represented by the Cockpit union, which itself waged a 36-hour strike last week.

Cabin attendants, on the other hand, are primarily represented by the Ufo union. The union has now announced its readiness to add to Lufthansa's woes by calling its own strikes in pursuit of a 15-percent wage increase. Ufo Union representative Joachim Müller told the daily Frankfurter Rundschau that a strike is "very likely." "We're ready for one," Müller added.

Some analysts have put the cost of the strike at about €5 million ($7.9 million) per day for Lufthansa. But others are estimating far greater damage if the strike grows. Hagen Lesch of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW), a German economic think tank, estimates that a strike extension could force the airline to cancel up to 25 percent of its flights, incurring losses for Lufthansa of "up to €30 million ($47 million) per day." He said it was in the company's interest to resume negotiations with Ver.di as quickly as possible, "because a huge company like Lufthansa cannot afford losses on that scale."

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