COMMENTS
“Willingness to agree” you sort of.
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Internal comments: This is a comment. The commentary expresses the writer’s attitude.
Published
Tuesday, July 05, 2022 – 12:42 p.m.
last updated
Tuesday, 05 July 2022 – 12:59
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“As long as the parties sit together, it shows a real willingness to agree” was the message from a number of experts and analysts about the difficult negotiations between the SAS management and the pilots.
That was obviously wrong. Yesterday, negotiations broke down, and over 900 pilots go on strike. There was little real will to agree. At least from the management’s side.
Thousands of Norwegians are now affected by canceled flights and broken holiday plans. If your flight is canceled, you do not have many desirable options.
Either you have to go out with maybe tens of thousands of kroner to book your family on another plane, or you can end up driving for days by train, bus or car to get where you are going. Of course people are given up.
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Do not blame the pilots. It can certainly be incomprehensible to many why the pilots, who after all earn quite well, should “hit” our holiday with a strike. At least the SAS management has every interest in portraying them as such, as greedy pilots who do not understand the company’s and passengers’ best interests.
– The decision to go on strike shows a shockingly small understanding of the critical situation that SAS is in, said SAS director Anko van der Werff. He has an annual salary of NOK 12.5 million. Just mention it.
All indications are that the pilots have shown real willingness to negotiate, and have agreed to significant savings for SAS. But every time the negotiations moved forward, the management came up with new demands, it is reported.
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There is, of course, a tolerance limit for workers. It really should do that. When the management wants a pay cut of 30 percent and even reorganizes the company so that many pilots get worse rights, is it strange that they use the completely legal and legitimate tool strike?
It is a fairly classic conflict of interest we are witnessing in the ongoing SAS strike. The SAS management will not give employees the power to make demands together under the same collective agreement, but will use a “split and rule” strategy by dividing the pilots into different sub-companies, with different pay and working conditions.
The pilots, for their part, will have better rights and working conditions. They believe SAS is trying to organize itself out of employer responsibility.
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SAS, on the other hand, is in deep economic crisis. Fewer business trips and now flying on the ground through the summer holidays can be the start of the end for the company. They want flexibility and the ability to adapt. Therefore, they have refused to meet the pilots’ demands.
But the SAS management behaves like bullies. It was a clearly furious SAS director who met the press yesterday and put the blame on the pilots. When he does it this way, the road back to the negotiating table is long.
This strike comes at a bad time for SAS. They are desperate for investors, but few want to own a bankruptcy estate that is unable to reach an agreement with its own employees.
Perhaps the biggest hope is that the Scandinavian states will spit in more money if the company is unable to raise enough private capital on its own. When SAS was established in 1946, it was wholly owned by the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish states. Since then, Norway has sold out completely, and we should thank you for that.
Many people have good reasons to be angry that the holiday plans are failing, but the right mind is in the right place: against the SAS management, not the pilots.
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