The Verdi union and the executive board of the Lufthansa Group announced the agreement on a crisis package on Wednesday evening. Among other things, this stipulates that Christmas and holiday pay will be omitted. The increase in short-time allowance is also to be reduced. In return, there is protection against dismissal.

The negotiations between the employee representatives and Lufthansa dragged on for a long time. Not surprising, because there is a lot at stake for both sides. The two sides have now agreed on a crisis package designed to ensure savings of 200 million euros. The measures essentially apply to the collective bargaining ground workers of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Lufthansa Technik AG and Lufthansa Cargo AG. In addition to short-time work, the 24.000 soil tariff employees are now making an important contribution to coping with the serious consequences of the corona pandemic.

Savings will take effect immediately with the elimination of the Christmas bonus for 2020. It was also agreed for 2021 that the holiday and Christmas bonus including surcharges will not apply. In addition, short-time work will be consistently continued and the increase in short-time allowance for 2021 will be reduced from 90 to 87 percent. Overall, in 2021, depending on the degree of loss of work, personnel cost savings of up to 50 percent can be achieved for the group of employees.

In return, Lufthansa has announced that it will offer protection against dismissal for the year 2021 (which protects against layoffs until the end of March 2022) and that it will offer partial retirement and company volunteer programs. Talks on long-term personnel cost reductions for the phase from January 1, 2022, when the short-time work allowance ceases, will be resumed early. Negotiations on a reconciliation of interests are being continued with the general works council of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. “With this crisis package, we have taken an important first step towards reducing personnel costs on the ground and we can avoid making redundancies for operational reasons in 2021. However, we must not let up in working on measures to deal with the crisis in order to find good solutions for our employees even after the end of short-time work ”, says Michael Niggemann, Board Member for Human Resources, Legal Affairs and M&A at Deutsche Lufthansa AG. The agreements made still require the approval of the Verdi members.