Until now, German Airways (formerly WDL Aviation) has not had a collective agreement for flight attendants. That has now changed, because the UFO trade union was able to reach an agreement with the management of the carrier, which specializes in ACMI and charter services.

The new collective agreement contains a significant improvement in the basic salary in several steps up to 2026 and, for the first time, a 5-level remuneration table with automatic gross salary increases based on length of service. Furthermore, various measures to increase the stability of the duty roster were negotiated in order to absorb peaks in the summer. In this context, from next year there will be the possibility of voluntary participation in a so-called "highflyer team", which will result in substantial additional remuneration. The package is rounded off by further collective agreement solutions for holiday allocation in order to achieve improved planning security for staff and flight operations.

“At this point, we have to commend the members of the collective bargaining committee, who, with a sense of proportion and the necessary tenacity, made their demands together with the UFO experts and finally negotiated them with the management. However, we can also state that the management was accessible for solutions on most issues - even if nothing was given to us. The management at German Airways has understood that in the current situation, in which all airlines are desperately looking for staff, working and remuneration conditions must be so fair and attractive that employees can be retained. In addition, we are very pleased that the top management sees the need for tariffing and thus also shows the cabin the appreciation for their good work," says Joachim Vázquez Bürger, Board Member for Tariff Policy at UFO.

"Unfortunately, we have to assume that the wet lease will be used by non-tariff airlines to put pressure on the working and remuneration conditions of their own staff, as is also the case with temporary work. There are regulations on safety standards for wet leasing, but not on good and fairly paid work. We are campaigning at national and European level for tariff classification to be included in the approval requirements. In this way it can be ensured that, with Wetlease, no personnel are used at dumping wages in order to start a competition to the detriment of their own crews," says Daniel Kassa Mbuambi, Chairman of UFO.