Julian Moxon/PARIS
FRENCH PILOT unions are continuing to obstruct attempts to negotiate an end to the crippling series of strikes at Air Inter, which led, on 12 May, to the resignation of the president, Michel Bernard (Flight International, 15-23 May).
Air France president Christian Blanc has stepped into the breach, albeit temporarily, saying that he is "...not the man to allow absorption of Air Inter by Air France". The unions remain unconvinced. The most combative, a group representing three pilot unions, has refused to meet Blanc "...until we know whether he was made president with the full agreement of the Government".
Bernard is the third Air Inter president in succession to resign before the end of his tenure - all of them victims of union and political pressure. He quit after just 20 months in the post, when his plan to cut jobs and prepare the airline for a merger with Air France fell foul of the unions.
Blanc, his temporary successor, came to his Air France post only after Bernard Attali resigned as president because of the Government's failure to support his restructuring plan in late 1993.
Developments at the airline, which has been hit by seven strikes since mid-February at a cost of Fr200 million ($39.6 million), are providing the new, conservative, Chirac Government with its first major test of industrial policy. The troubles are seen as symptomatic of the larger problems facing French state-owned industry, which is being increasingly disrupted by protests over mounting unemployment.
The strikes are mainly the result of Blanc's stated aim of bringing Air Inter into a new European arm of Air France. The workforce believes that this will lead to the end of the airline's independence, bringing drastic job cuts. Blanc faces the apparently impossible task of reconciling this with the need to compete with the newly liberated French independents such as AOM, TAT and Air Liberte, which have won access to the most profitable domestic routes previously monopolised by Air Inter.
The crisis is already being viewed as one of the worst in French air-transport history, and Blanc has warned that failure to resolve the problem would make things worse. "Air France and Air Inter are bound to co-operate, otherwise they are doomed, and will no longer exist or no longer be French within less than five years," he says.
Air Inter recorded a profit of Fr21 million in 1994, but remains some Fr517 million in debt following five consecutive years of losses. The airline prides itself, however, on "...never having asked for state aid", while its majority shareholder, Air France, is in the process of receiving Fr20 billion from the French Government.
Source: Flight International
