Lufthansa Ground Staff Launch New Strike on Tuesday

The trade union has formally declared a fresh round of strikes involving Lufthansa’s ground staff stationed at several airports across Germany, including Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Stuttgart. The strike, scheduled for Tuesday, is a result of an ongoing wage conflict with the airline.

The dispute not only involves the ground staff of Lufthansa’s passenger transport but also extends to two other crucial divisions of the airline—Lufthansa Technik and Lufthansa Cargo.

In a similar sequence of events, a 27-hour-long strike that took place in early February resulted in significant disruption of operations at two of the country’s largest airports—Frankfurt and Munich. Lufthansa reported that nearly 900 out of 1,000 flights were cancelled due to the strike, impacting approximately 100,000 passengers.

In a recent round of discussions between the union and Lufthansa management, the airline proposed a 10% wage increase. However, this proposal has been deemed insufficient by the trade union, ver.di, which is demanding a pay rise of 12.5% and at least an additional 500 euros per month for 12 months for Lufthansa’s 25,000 ground employees.

The union highlighted a significant discrepancy in the wage structure, pointing out that while pilots are receiving an annual salary of up to 270,000 euros per group and double-digit salary increases, the ground staff—some of whom start with an hourly wage as low as 13 euros—have not even been compensated for the inflation of recent years.

In the meantime, another unionized strike is in progress involving pilots from Discover Airlines, a Lufthansa subsidiary that primarily operates flights to popular tourist destinations.