Aviation
Just when Brussels Airlines can once again turn a profit, the social conflict between management and staff is escalating. The pilots are on strike from March 23 to 27. And this is just the beginning, it sounds.
There was not much room for euphoria when CEO Dorothea von Boxberg presented the record profits of Brussels Airlines last week. Although the airline was able to post black figures for the first time since 2018, a social conflict is putting the management under high tension.
After some of the cabin crew went on strike for three days two weeks ago, some of the pilots have now announced that they will not work from Saturday 23 (5 am) to Wednesday morning 27 March. And that is just the “first wave” of strikes, the unions report in a message to employees. As long as there is no agreement, they want to stop work “once or twice a month, in blocks of four days”.
14,000 euros less
Four years ago, during the corona crisis, the staff had to give up wages to save the company from collapse. Now that Brussels Airlines is making a profit again, it demands an adjustment. But this conflicts with the management, which says it has limited room for wage increases this year (6 percent).
But the unions won’t accept that. The loss of wages during the corona crisis is still a heavy burden. “We are talking about an average surrender of 14,000 euros per year for a pilot,” the unions write in a press release.
The frustration is increasing now that not only Brussels Airlines has booked a record profit of 53 million euros, but parent company Lufthansa has also recorded a substantial profit of 2.7 billion euros. That is the third-best financial result in its history.
The fact that Brussels Airlines has the lowest profit margin of the aviation group has nothing to do with high wage costs, the unions say. They refer to operational problems that persist “because management does not listen”, and indicate that “the high taxes in Zaventem weigh on profitability”.
