A walkout mouse paralyzed the Monday operations of Lufthansa AG in Frankfurt and Hamburg after airline officials and unionized workers deadlocked over salary increase negotiations.
Baggage handlers and cabin crew walked out of their jobs in midnight after negotiations on a 10 percent pay increase over 12 months collapsed. The airline is offering a 6.7 percent increase in two stages.
The strike could cost Lufthansa as much as 5 million euros ($7.9 million) a day, according to Tagesspiegel am Sonntag. The strike covers the German carrier's domestic and international flights.
After a walkout by pilots last week, Lufthansa is bracing for more strikes from 52,000 other employees.
The airline industry was badly hit by soaring fuel prices. Demands for higher pay by Lufthansa employees came as inflation in Europe's largest economy rose.
Comments
Nuts! This is not a wildcat
Nuts! This is not a wildcat strike, but a regular bargaining strike endorsed by the reformist ver.di public sector union. Some 90% of their membership voted for a strike some days ago. ver.di has some implementation among the technical, operational and administrative staff of the Lufthansa Airline. In the past few years they lost large numbers of members amongst the pilot and the cabin crews due to the unions very soft position against the management. The biggest pilots union is now "Cockpit" and the biggest cabin crew union "UFO".
Sorry about that robot, I
Sorry about that robot, I wonder where the wrong information came from?
The article has now been edited (the article originally stated that this was a wildcat strike)