Deutsche Lufthansa AG yesterday lost a court bid to stop a strike by flight attendants, forcing the airline to cancel 930 flights scheduled for yesterday and raising the stakes in a labor dispute that has already led to a record string of walkouts by cabin crew.
A German labor court in the Darmstadt ruled early yesterday that the UFO flight attendants union could move forward with a three-day strike at Lufthansa’s hubs in Frankfurt and Munich.
Whether the union can also walk out in Dusseldorf, as it had planned, remains open after the airline asked a second court to extend an injunction through tomorrow that it issued earlier stopping a previous strike in that city.
Prior to the latest ruling, the airline canceled flights at the three hubs, impacting 100,000 customers, due to the uncertainty of whether they would be able to operate the connections.
The UFO cabin crew union has called for three days of strikes through tomorrow and said it was considering lengthening the walkout, which began last week.
Lufthansa “continues to hold the position that the strike demands have not been defined clearly enough,” the Cologne-based company said in an e-mailed statement.
Labor leaders are battling against Lufthansa’s efforts to restructure to compete with low-cost rivals such as Ryanair Holdings PLC and EasyJet PLC, Europe’s two biggest discount carriers. The airline’s strategy hinges on development of its Eurowings division into a low-cost arm.
Lufthansa’s latest offer to UFO included a one-time payment of 3,000 euros (US$3,220) per employee and acceptance of the union’s demands on early retirements, but only for current workers, and the carrier said it would scale back flights, a proposal that UFO called a “provocation.”
The Dusseldorf order, which said the union had not adequately specified its demands before calling the strike, can be appealed.
While the Dusseldorf ruling only covered a walkout on Tuesday, Lufthansa asked the court to also block the union from continuing the strike in the coming days from that location. The tribunal was scheduled to hear arguments from both sides yesterday afternoon.
The airline had been seeking the injunctions at the two German labor courts to prevent more walkouts after stoppages for four of the past five days, offering to resolve the dispute through arbitration.
Lufthansa has already dropped 1,900 flights since the strikes began on Friday last week. It has declined to say how much the flight attendants’ strike has cost.
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