The German concern Deutsche Lufthansa AG is the largest airline in Europe with a fleet of 375 aircraft. In terms of the number of passengers carried, it ranks fifth in the world. However, at the end of the summer of 2012, Lufthansa customers experienced unforeseen difficulties associated with the strike of flight attendants from a union with the notable name UFO.
While the strike is carried out by workers only a union of one of the German air carriers - the company Lufthansa. However, their leaders say that if the employer does not meet the requirements of the working staff, the strikers will turn to colleagues to support their campaign across the industry.
The main requirements of flight attendants, which are expressed by the union, which unites two-thirds of the 19 thousand employees of the concern, include a 5% pay increase and job security guarantees. UFO negotiations with Lufthansa senior management lasted almost 13 months and did not produce significant results, which led to the start of the strike. The organizers of the action say they have chosen the time for its start on the basis that the mass flow of air passengers returning from vacation has not yet begun. Therefore, the inconvenience caused to citizens will not be so great.
The reason for such difficult negotiations is that Lufthansa, like most European air carriers, is in difficult economic conditions due to the global financial crisis, rising prices for aviation gasoline and increased competition with low-cost airlines. The plan for minimizing losses adopted by the German concern should reduce the expenditure side of the budget by 1.5 billion euros and includes, in particular, a reduction of 3.5 thousand employees.
In total, the airline makes 1850 flights daily and most of them use the airports of Frankfurt and Munich. The rally began in Frankfurt, where Lufthansa flight attendants held an 8-hour strike. On the last day of summer at Rhein-Main Airport, for this reason, 220 flights were canceled, about which passengers were notified by SMS. Although the strike related only to domestic airline operations, it also affected international flights - due to the accumulation of aircraft, arriving airliners departed for other airports in Germany.
