At midnight on the night of Saturday, the deadline for the first vote on the new agreement between SAS and the members of the pilot associations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark expired. Now the result is clear.
– The members have approved the agreement and the NSF board and the Norwegian Airmen’s Association take note of the result, writes the Norwegian SAS pilots’ association in a press release on Saturday.
Five years
– SAS is under bankruptcy protection in the USA and the agreement must probably also be approved by the American court that manages the creditors’ assets, says Jan Levi Skogvang, head of the SAS Norway Aviation Association, in a press release.
The vote ended in a clear majority in favor of the collective agreement, Dansk reports TV 2. 93 percent of the Danish pilots voted yes, and the turnout was 89 percent.
Flight analyst Hans Jørgen Elnæs in Winair says the figures from the Norwegian and Swedish pilots will not be made public due to the duty of confidentiality. Elnæs says the agreement is usable for SAS and the pilots.
– The pilots probably feel that this is not quite optimal, but it is important that SAS stands up now. If they had voted down the agreement, it would have ended with another strike within the next few weeks, which would have been a disaster, says Elnæs to TV 2.
The agreement has a term of five years from 1 October 2022. In July, 900 SAS pilots went on strike for 15 days.
Pay cut
The pilots finally accepted an agreement which, among other things, involves a 25 per cent pay cut, more flexible use of employees in high and low season and up to a 60-hour working week.
– All the 560 dismissed pilots will now be offered to return to SAS. We are satisfied to have reached an agreement where the Norwegian working life model is no longer challenged by the SAS management, says Skogvang.
During the strike, more than 3,700 flights were cancelled. 380,000 passengers were affected by the pilot strike which lasted half of July.
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