Cancellations are set to continue at Olympic Airlines if the question of staff shortages is not resolved, while labour strife is also plaguing Virgin Express.
Olympic's unions are demanding that the airline reinstate the 64 seasonal flight attendants it fired in February. At presstime, the airline was forced to cancel some 12 national and international flights per day with unions claiming insufficient staff to operate flights under safety regulations. 'Cabin staff are already working up to flight time limits and they can't exceed that,' declares Omiros Sotiriadis, vice president of Olympic's flight attendants union, EISF.
And a resolution is not in sight after management broke off talks with unions, 'Our new chairman Theodoros Tsakiridis wants to take our head off. We don't know what the management has in mind,' says Sotiriadis.
Sotiriadis dismisses Greek government allegations that Olympic's wages are too high and working hours too inflexible, pointing out that a chief cabin attendant earns just $20,000 per year at Olympic, compared with an annual wage of $72,000 at Air France.
Meanwhile, negotiations continue at Brussels-based Virgin Express, following an unofficial one-day strike by pilots in February which led to the cancellation of almost a third of flights.
Negotiations over pay and an alleged recruitment 'embargo' between Virgin Express and Sabena, are making 'no progress', says Bernadette Mussche, representative at Virgin pilots and cabin crew union, SETCB. The union wants better pay and working conditions, which it says are 'worse than elsewhere' in Belgium.
According to Mussche, Virgin Express pilots and cabin staff earn just three-quarters of the basic salary at Sabena. Another gripe is linked to the fact that Virgin now operates a far greater proportion of scheduled short-haul flights than previously. Pay is based on flight time and, as cabin crew now spend a greater proportion of their working time waiting rather than flying, they want compensation.
And staff can no longer look elsewhere. 'Once upon a time, if you were not happy with the situation, you could go,' says Mussche. Fifteen Virgin Express pilots took jobs at other airlines, mostly Sabena, last year, she says, but now a deal between Sabena and Virgin means pilots 'are prevented from leaving'.
Virgin Express denies there is any recruitment embargo. 'There is a shortage of pilots at the moment. We said to Sabena, "if you recruit too many of our pilots we will be short and unable to run a proper service", and Sabena stopped hiring Virgin pilots.'
Virgin Express plays down the seriousness of the dispute, maintaining that the strike action was led by just 30 per cent of the airline's pilots, which it claims were 'manipulating' the rest of the staff.
Tom Gill
Source: Airline Business
