Vienna airport director Günther Ofner, in his role as aviation specialist group chairman of the WKO, has once again spoken out on the matter of the stalled Austrian Airlines-KV negotiations. He publicly appeals for the Vida union and the Bord works council to accept the latest offer.

Although Ofner speaks in his role as a Chamber of Commerce official, his full-time job is as a board member of Flughafen Wien AG, whose largest customer is Austrian Airlines. As airport boss, he would be obliged to remain neutral, but this apparently does not apply to the WKO function. For legal reasons, Austrian Airlines is not allowed to conduct the KV negotiations directly with the Vida union, but must be represented by the Chamber of Commerce.

Only a few days ago it was announced that round number 20 of negotiations had been broken off without any results. The trade unionists want to let their members vote on the current state of affairs and possible further industrial action from the beginning of this week. It is not yet possible to predict when the result will be available and what steps the Bord and Vida works councils will then take.

However, the employers also seem to be taking advantage of the fact that the flying staff do not necessarily appear to be united behind the employee representatives. This also shows, for example, that many flight attendants and pilots did not even take part in the most recent company meetings. The AUA was also able to carry out at least 80 flights despite the BV. Some Austrian Airlines employees secretly claim that corresponding pressure was put on employees with fixed-term contracts. Allegedly, participation could lead to the employment contract not being extended. However, such “threats” are said to have only been made orally, so the claims cannot be objectively verified.

In any case, the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, as the formal representative of the Austrian Airlines management, is also publicly urging that the Vida union and, indirectly, the AUA flying staff should simply accept the latest offer. The employee representatives have already announced that they do not see any significant improvements and have therefore broken off the negotiations - at least for the time being.

It is well known that Austrian Airlines is no longer a super premium carrier, but has aligned itself with the service and product levels of its competitors Ryanair and Wizz Air, especially on short and medium-haul routes. Last year we were able to benefit from the high demand and achieve high ticket prices on the market. It is questionable whether this will remain the case in the long term, as quite a few travelers consider switching to cheaper providers. It is therefore not really surprising that the numerous flight cancellations that Austrian Airlines has had in the last few weeks are actually free advertising for competitors who were not affected.

“In view of the AUA's very good offer of a guaranteed 18% salary increase - even up to 28% for co-pilots - it would be completely unacceptable to continue to endanger thousands of jobs in the aviation industry. That's why I appeal to the employee representatives to accept the offer and not to destroy their own company with unfulfillable demands. The current offer is well above inflation and is better than all collective agreements recently concluded by vida. A prolonged labor dispute would massively damage air traffic, which has just recovered from the Corona crisis. It must not be the case that tens of thousands of employees and vida members at the airport, at service providers and in tourism are taken hostage and their existence is jeopardized because irresponsible agitators make absurd salary demands," WKÖ aviation chief Günther Ofner criticizes the actions of the employee representatives . “You don’t need to be an expert to imagine what this means for the future of the AUA and Austrian aviation: namely the loss of thousands of jobs and lasting damage to Austria as a business location,” explains Ofner. And he reminds: “Social partnership does not mean that one side makes impossible demands and insists on them no matter what. Rather, as a social partner you should strive to find a compromise that is feasible for both sides.”

In his WKO role, the Vienna airport director also takes the view that the employee representatives would “ruin the leading company AUA” with what he sees as “excessive demands”: “That benefits neither the AUA itself, its workforce nor the members of vida in the different industries. I therefore call on the union and the works council to stop sawing their own branch.”