Lufthansa cabin crew plan to stage a strike on Friday, the Ufo union said on Wednesday, in a step likely to cause significant delays for passengers nationwide.
The strike is set to begin at 00:01 on Friday (2201 GMT on Thursday) and run until 10 pm, the union said.
“All Deutsche Lufthansa AG departures from Frankfurt and Munich airports will be affected,” the union said, naming Lufthansa’s hubs.
The strike will also affect “all Lufthansa CityLine departures from Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Stuttgart, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Hanover airports,” according to Ufo.
The walk-out means numerous passengers face flight cancellations.
In a ballot held at the end of March, cabin crew at Lufthansa and its regional subsidiary Cityline voted by a large majority for industrial action.
At the parent company, around 94% voted in favour of strikes, whilst at Cityline the figure was just under 99%.
Staff deliberately excluded the Easter holidays from industrial action in order to minimise the impact on passengers, noted the union.
“We are very aware that there may nevertheless be disruptions on the return from the holidays, and we expressly regret this,” said Ufo chairman Joachim Vázquez Bürger in a statement.
In his view, the strike could have been avoided – “the responsibility lies with Lufthansa, which has so far not even managed to present a negotiable offer,” the chairman said.
Lufthansa calls for resumption of talks
Viable solutions can only be found through dialogue and strikes must always remain a last resort, Lufthansa said on Wednesday evening. “We are therefore calling on the union to resume talks with us. We are ready to do so at any time.”
The renewed strike call by Ufo is “hitting our passengers particularly hard in the midst of the return travel rush at the end of the Easter holidays,” said the company.
Customers would be notified automatically should their flight be affected.
From Ufo’s perspective, the reasons for the escalation are the deadlocked negotiations over the framework collective agreement at Lufthansa and the company’s unwillingness to negotiate a social collective agreement at CityLine.
Around 800 jobs are at stake. According to management, the regional subsidiary’s flight operations are set to cease next year. It will be replaced by a new company with a similar name: Lufthansa City Airlines.