According to a statement from the Aeropers union, the negotiations for a new collective employment contract for the pilots of the holiday airline Edelweiss Air were broken off without any result.

Since the beginning of this year, the Swiss sister company and the employee representatives have been negotiating a new collective employment agreement for the Edelweiss pilots. A collective employment agreement is the Swiss counterpart to the Austrian collective agreement or the German collective agreement. The union particularly wants to achieve higher wages and improved working conditions for the cockpit staff.

The current contract expires on June 30, 2024, so that, according to Aeropers, there is a risk of a contractless situation on July 1, 2024 unless an agreement is reached beforehand. At the moment, however, the fronts seem to have hardened. One of the reasons is that the so-called GAV-2019 was terminated by the union with the consent of around 90 percent of the members.

“We are disappointed that the management of Edelweiss reacts to all of Aeropers’ proposals with preconditions,” says Clemens Kopetz, President of the Aeropers pilots’ association. “Without preconditions, the Edelweiss management refuses to talk. We therefore informed her last night that we were breaking off the negotiations.”

In the next few days, the union's board wants to decide on how to proceed and then provide information about how things will proceed. “The current CBA is now five years old and needs to be adapted to social reality. It is time for better planning of social life and financial perspectives,” says Janos Fazekas, board member of Aeropers. Referring to concessions made during the corona pandemic, they are now demanding higher wages. It is also pointed out that Edelweiss is said to be the second most profitable airline in the Lufthansa Group after Swiss with an EBIT margin of 8,5 percent.