The SAS manager wants the company to grow, create jobs and survive “together with the unions”. But the unions have never heard from him.
SAS fell more than nine percent on the stock exchanges in Oslo and Stockholm on Monday. According to SAS CEO Anko van der Werff, the airline is fighting to survive. He also uses the opportunity to repeat that the company has to do things significantly differently.
E24 quotes the Danish newspaper Finans.dk, where van der Werff says that the company has a number of problems as a result of the corona pandemic.
At the end of the first half of the year, the airline had a debt of around SEK 27 billion.
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– It requires understanding and will on the part of everyone, and the negotiations have a purpose. SAS must be competitive, so that we can survive, grow and thus create jobs. I want to do this with the unions, but it takes two to dance the tango, says van der Werff to the website.
For it to be a dance, one dance partner must bid on the other. It has never happened, say Norwegian union leaders.
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Never invited
– That the top manager of SAS says that two are needed to dance tango, he is absolutely right. But he has never invited us to any dance. It is also daring to dance with someone who stabs you in the back and who will continue with the production platforms that displace their own jobs and deprive employees of the opportunity to negotiate their rights for all time to come, says Roger Klokset to FriFagbevegelse.
He is deputy chairman of the Norwegian SAS Pilots’ Association, and has now on several occasions read in the media that the SAS management has and will meet the pilots, and wants dialogue with the unions.
But Klokset has not heard a beep.
– The only thing I know of is a digital general meeting before the weekend, and that the management there pointed out that the new production platforms are absolutely necessary for the company’s future competitiveness. And that in addition savings are needed, says Klokset.
He points out that the unions obviously want a constructive dialogue and will help find solutions.
– We have always sought and always wanted that, he says.
– What SAS is doing now is to create an internal labor market where its own companies will compete for the same jobs and which will undercut each other. All job security disappears, points out Klokset.
– Infinitely sad
He reiterates that SAS’s plans violate the law in relation to business transfers and in relation to internal agreements.
The positions in the production models are advertised, but not filled. But it is clear that the current head of planning services at SAS, Eivind Bjurstrøm, will be director of SAS Connect Crew Services, which will be the one staffing company. Here he also becomes a board member. Bjurstrøm will also be a board member of SAS Link Crew Services – another new staffing company.
comment: «SAS and Norwegian run an advanced form of union crushing»
Klokset believes it is very unfortunate that SAS has started this process at the same time as air traffic is really on its way back.
– It almost seems that SAS is more concerned with getting the new platforms up and running, than keeping up with the competition after the corona era. This leads to several cancellations due to lack of personnel. What is happening in SAS at the moment is infinitely sad. SAS has been known as a decent company that can be trusted, with orderly working conditions. This is going in the wrong direction, Klokset believes.
SAS’s press manager, John Eckhoff, informs FriFagbevegelse that the summons to the employees’ unions will come “one of the next few days”.
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