Minister Hoekstra of Finance has rejected the KLM restructuring plan. According to insiders, the minister wants the agreements about wage moderation and employment conditions to last as long as the government support runs, until 2025, not for the duration of the collective labor agreements, which expire in 2022.
For the next few hours, the KLM management will hold crisis consultations with the eight unions for ground crew, cabin crew and pilots. It is unlikely that they will agree to a longer duration of the austerity measures in order to obtain government support of 3.4 billion.
At the end of last month, the day before the restructuring plan had to be in The Hague, the term was already a source of arguments. The collective labor agreement for ground and cabin crew lasts until the end of 2022, and that for pilots until 1 March of that year. That added to perks that pilots were able to pick up in exchange for giving up 20 percent wages by the “big earners” among them (three times the average) put the proportions on edge.
Equal treatment
Jan van den Brink of FNV Aviation repeated this week in Het Financieele Dagblad the threat that the union will not sign the agreement with the KLM management if not all employees are treated equally. “Those agreements do not have the same term and the highest paid receive gifts that the rest of the employees do not receive.” Van den Brink said he wanted to wait and see what the minister and the House of Representatives have to say about this.
There is a lack of understanding at KLM that the minister has waited so long with his demand for a longer duration of the agreements, which must lead to a 15 percent reduction in “manageable” costs. Hoekstra has known how things are going since 1 October, when CEO Pieter Elbers submitted the restructuring plan.
In the meantime, the money is flying out of the company, it became clear on Friday morning when the latest quarterly figures of parent company Air France-KLM were announced. KLM loses 6 million euros a day.
