The atmosphere between employee representatives and the management of Austrian Airlines has been tense for some time. The union and the works council are pushing for a new collective agreement, which should include a significant increase in salaries. An Austrian peculiarity is also playing a role in the negotiations: Austrian Airlines is not allowed to conclude collective agreements itself. This is the preserve of the professional association, i.e. the Chamber of Commerce. Therefore, WKO and ÖGB officials are sitting at the negotiating table. In theory, an agreement could be reached without involving AUA management, but in practice the Chamber of Commerce represents the interests of its member Austrian Airlines. In Austria, there are so-called industry-specific collective agreements in almost all sectors of the economy. The union and the respective professional association negotiate these, agree them and then the "KV" applies, for example, to all bakers, hairdressers, metalworking companies and so on. For historical reasons, there is no such industry-wide collective agreement in aviation. This has been heavily criticized by the ÖGB sub-union Vida for many years. The employee representatives repeatedly demand the conclusion of such a contract, but the Chamber of Commerce, which wants to stick to the current state of affairs, always refuses. There is no collective agreement for the Austrian aviation industry But why is there no collective agreement for the Austrian aviation industry? Historically, this is because at the time when the collective agreements valid across the industry were "invented", Austrian Airlines was the only Austrian airline. There was therefore simply no need, as it was only the state-owned company at the time, which was treated in the federal budget as a kind of "flying ÖBB". Only later, for example, Montana Austria, Lauda Air, Tyrolean