16. 02. 12. - 16:30

AUA pilots' contracts annulled

Austrian Airlines (AUA) bosses have infuriated works council leaders by cancelling previously arranged wage agreements of hundreds of employees.

Unionists confirmed yesterday (Weds) that the airline’s board decided to invalidate the existing contracts of 2,100 pilots and cabin crew staff. The affected employees were not sacked but asked to agree to working under the salary agreements of colleagues at Tyrolean Airways (Austrian Arrows). Tyrolean Airways is an affiliate of AUA. Its staff get paid significantly less than the pilots operating flights for the Viennese carrier.

The AUA executive board’s step means a 25 per cent salary cut of AUA’s pilots and cabin personnel. Furthermore, the affected employees’ incomes will not rise as sharply as before after having worked a certain number of years with AUA. The AUA board also plans to financially compensate laid off employees less strongly in the future.

All measures are part of a restructuring concept AUA was ordered to carry out by its owner, Germany’s Lufthansa. Stefan Lauer, who heads AUA’s supervisory board, expects a first series of austerity steps to be carried out by the end of this month when the panel he fronts will hold its next meeting.

Lufthansa, which recently announced a strict internal efficiency strategy, reportedly considers letting AUA go bust if the Viennese airline fails to achieve a turnaround this year. Another envisaged option is a drastic reduction of staff and connections while the future of Swiss, another subsidiary company of the German aviation giant, seems secure because of prospering operations.

Former Star Alliance chief Jaan Albrecht, who became AUA CEO in November 2011, wants to spend tens of millions of Euros less on personnel costs in the coming years. He warned that AUA was at risk of "crashing against the wall" if substantial reforms kept being postponed.

A spokesman for the company said today that the executive board had to act. He said company executives tried in vain for two weeks to reach a settlement with employees’ representatives – who rejected the board’s proposals as "insulting" and "not worth considering". The AUA official told broadcaster ORF that the executive board’s aim was to secure the carrier’s future. He said decision-makers had no more time for tactical games and bargaining with the works council.

AUA unionists, who held several extraordinary summits in the past weeks, refused to disclose whether staff were told to prepare for strikes. A spokesman pointed out that employees had already been strongly affected by a whole number of cutback proceedings since Lufthansa acquired a majority interest in AUA – which sustained a loss of around one billion Euros in the past 10 years – in 2009.

AUA is headed by Albrecht, Peter Malanik and Andreas Bierwirth. The carrier counted 737,400 passengers last month. This is an increase of 7.1 per cent compared to the same month of 2011. AUA has 5,800 full-time staff. Hundreds of employees were made redundant following the takeover by Lufthansa. The aviation industry giant has been headed by Christoph Franz since last year. He succeeded Wolfgang Mayrhuber. The Austrian was Lufthansa’s CEO for seven years. Lufthansa and its subsidiary firms registered more than 106 million customers in 2011.