The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday said it would adjust its demands to resume negotiations with EVA Airways as a strike by the airline’s flight attendants entered its seventh day.
“The union is open to discussing the amount of increase in per diem and is willing to make adjustments to the ‘anti-free rider’ clause,” it said in a statement.
The union would also not insist on having a seat on the company’s board as long as the airline allows it more participation in management and increases the transparency of operations, it said.
Photo: Chou Min-hung, Taipei Times
The statement came after EVA set down new conditions to resume talks with the union. The airline has not made any concessions since the strike began on Thursday last week.
The airline on Tuesday told a news conference that it would not continue negotiations unless the union adjusts its demands and sends a new version in writing.
The union’s demands include raising the hourly layover allowance from NT$90 to NT$150, increasing flight attendants’ rest time between shifts for some one-day round-trip flights, limiting the benefits that the union had earned to just its members, allowing union representatives to join the airline’s disciplinary committee and being represented on its board.
The union would collect opinions from all of its members on how to adjust its demands and draft a new version today, union member Chu Chia-yun (曲佳雲) told other members on the picket line outside EVA headquarters in Taoyuan’s Nankan (南崁).
“If you want to fight to the end, please show us your determination, but if you want this to be over, and you think this is just about dignity, the union can also accept that,” she said.
Asked about EVA’s plan to help striking flight attendants apply for new passports so that they can immediately return to work, union member Lee Ying (李瀅) said the company appears to have tried doing so for 30 attendants.
“To apply for a new passport, they first need to annul their existing passport. The flight attendants have signed a contract agreeing to place their passports under the union’s care, so the passports are neither lost nor invalid,” she said, adding that EVA’s approach to the passport issue should be condemned.
Despite the prospect of having to make further concessions, the union received a morale boost when Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) visited the picket line.
Yu urged the union to “stay strong so that you can have equal leverage when negotiating” with the company.
She has been following the strike for days, and decided to visit them after seeing the upper management’s uncompromising attitude and authoritarian thinking, she said.
Yu was the second lawmaker to visit the striking union members in Taoyuan.
DPP Legislator Chung Kung-chao (鍾孔炤) visited them on Monday.
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