Lufthansa strike ends

Ver.di, the main service-sector union in Germany, said the strike would end with the beginning of the early shift Saturday.

Lufthansa, the largest European airline after Air France-KLM, agreed to an immediate 5.1 percent pay increase for its 34,000 ground staff, retroactive to July 1, and another increase of 2.3 percent on July 1, 2009. Employees will also get a one-time payment, part of which will be linked with performance, of up to 2.4 percent of their annual salary. The deal amounts to a pay increase at an annual rate of 4.2 percent over two years.

This is a long way off the 9.8 per cent annual pay increase initially demanded by Verdi, and even further off the 15 per cent pay demand that the cabin-staff union Ufo is considering as of January 1. “We want a bigger pay rise for cabin crew” than ground staff achieved, Joachim Muller, Ufo chief negotiator, said. Lufthansa would be forced to renegotiate its deal with Verdi should he succeed.

The German airline’s willingness to reach any deal had grown as lack of even simple maintenance grounded an increasing number of aircraft – the number of cancelled flights rose from 70 on Tuesday to 130 on Thursday.

"It is certainly not painless for either side," Stefan Lauer, Lufthansa's chief negotiator, said in a statement Friday. Lauer said after the deal was struck that it was "imperative, however, that the increased costs be compensated by higher productivity."

Ver.di called the strike after months of negotiations failed to produce a result. It began Monday and caused a few flight cancellations, but by Thursday had gathered enough steam to disrupt routes between Germany and the United States, Canada, India and Dubai.

UFO, the union that says it represents most flight attendants, refused to accept the agreement, but its rejection of the new contract with Ver.di does not mean a continuation of the strike. Its contract runs through the end of the year, and negotiations will probably only begin in early 2009 as 14,000 cabin crew negotiate pay.