Lufthansa ground staff begin strike with flights already impacted

DPA
·2 min read
A view of canceled Lufthansa flights on the departure board at Frankfurt Airport. Verdi has called on Lufthansa ground staff at several German airports to go on a warning strike in order to build up pressure in the ongoing wage negotiations. Helmut Fricke/dpa
A view of canceled Lufthansa flights on the departure board at Frankfurt Airport. Verdi has called on Lufthansa ground staff at several German airports to go on a warning strike in order to build up pressure in the ongoing wage negotiations. Helmut Fricke/dpa

A second strike by Lufthansa ground staff began on Monday, with the German airline expecting hundreds of flight cancellations and more than 100,000 passengers to be affected.

The company has already cancelled a number of connections at its most important hub in Frankfurt and only a few intercontinental flights were still scheduled to take place.

Lufthansa employees in technology, logistics, freight and IT walked out, strike leader Marvin Reschinsky from trade union verdi confirmed, with full ground staff at Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart due to follow in the coming hours. The strike will last just over a day.

The airline intends to fly 10 to 20% of its planned schedule of around 1,000 flights on Tuesday. During the first strike almost a fortnight ago, around 900 flights were cancelled and more than 100,000 passengers had to reschedule.

Lufthansa warned passengers on cancelled flights that they should not come to the airport because the rebooking desks there were not staffed.

In contrast, a separate pilots' strike at Lufthansa subsidiary Discover meant the firm only had to cancel a single flight to Mallorca from Frankfurt.

Lufthansa said another solidarity strike by the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots' union on long-haul routes had caused no disruption to passengers. All four Frankfurt take-offs were possible without restrictions.

The background to the strikes is the Lufthansa Group's collective pay negotiations with what verdi says is approximately 25,000 employees on the ground - including at Deutsche Lufthansa, Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa Cargo, Lufthansa Technik Logistik Services, Lufthansa Engineering and Operational Services and other group companies.

Lufthansa says only around 20,000 employees are affected.

Collective bargaining talks are to continue on Wednesday. Verdi described the second wave of strikes as necessary because Lufthansa had made no attempt to improve its existing offer in previous negotiations.