– Whether it will be today or tomorrow, I don’t know. That’s all I can say, says Ruland to NTB on Saturday afternoon.
On Friday, 120 cabin crew in SAS went on strike after they did not reach an agreement with the SAS management in the collective bargaining negotiations. The conflict concerns both wages and working conditions.
– SAS has not been willing to accommodate us on any of our demands. We therefore had no other choice but to go on strike, said leader Martinus Røkkum for the SAS Norway Cabin Association in Parat.
He said on Friday that all SAS flights will eventually be affected, and that the SAS planes will remain on the ground until their demands are accepted.
Rebookings
From Wednesday, the strike will be stepped up, and then there will be around 405 striking SAS employees organized in the Fellesforbundet and around 240 organized in Parat.
– It is obviously very regrettable that we are on strike, and we again encourage the parties to return to the negotiating table so that we can come to a good agreement together as quickly as possible that all parties can live with in the long term, says press manager Øystein Schmidt in SAS.
He emphasizes that the most important thing for the airline now is the operational and the passengers.
– We are now doing what we can to ensure that the travelers get where they are going, including through rebookings. The traffic challenges linked to the strike yesterday were limited, and there were only a handful of departures that did not go as planned. Major traffic consequences are not expected during the weekend either, and the vast majority of flights will therefore go as planned, he says.
Informs the travelers who are affected
Schmidt says that SAS continuously informs travelers about each individual’s departure via SMS, the SAS app and by email. If the travelers do not hear anything about the flight being cancelled, it means that things are going as normal.
He further encourages travelers to seek information on SAS’ websites, which are continuously updated.
Martinus Røkkum in Parat said on Friday that he believes the parties have two completely different perceptions of reality. He accused the company of not wanting “to give employees any kind of improvement in working conditions, on the contrary, they are using bankruptcy protection and restructuring to squeeze even more out of already hard-pressed employees.”
NHO, on the other hand, believes that SAS has gone to great lengths to meet the cabin crew both in terms of pay and working hours.
– It is particularly unfortunate to have a conflict in a situation where the company is under bankruptcy protection and restructuring and is still losing money. This conflict contributes to making an already difficult situation even more difficult, said managing director Erik Lahnstein of NHO Luftfart.
At the same time, the Norwegian Cabin Association accused SAS of strike-breaking on Friday. According to them, the strikers have been replaced by cabin crew from Sweden and Denmark. In front of NRK, Schmidt rejected the accusations and described this practice as normal.
Asking for a “decent offer”
Union secretary Dag-Einar Sivertsen in the Swedish Union says that the cabin crew have for a long time borne much of the burden that the cutbacks in SAS have entailed. The starting salary for a cabin employee in SAS today is NOK 27,500 a month, and there is no supplement for evening, night or weekend work.
– Our people in the cabin are simply tired. The limit for more flexibility has long since been breached, Sivertsen said before the mediation started.
He believes the cabin crew have made “reasonable demands for two weekends off a month in order to be able to maintain a minimum of social life and a daily meal break somewhere other than at the passengers’ dock queue”.
– SAS has rejected all demands and wants the cabin crew to continue working under conditions that are not compatible with Norwegian working life, says Sivertsen.
Røkkum in Parat says the desire to strike is great, but that they will sit down at the negotiating table again if SAS comes up with a “decent offer”.
#Ombudsman #contact #parties #SAS #strike #weekend
2024-08-25 00:20:48
