Last week proved another busy one for labor relations lawyers in Germany, as an impasse in negotiations between Lufthansa Group and its pilots’ union, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), led to another round of strikes, a lawsuit by the airline and eventually a labor court decision that effectively halted further work action by cockpit crew. Nevertheless, Lufthansa committed to resuming negotiations on all open collective labor agreement items with the union's collective labor agreement committee at any time. “Our goal is still to work with the VC to find a joint solution to all the open CLA issues through the negotiating process,” said Bettina Volkens, Lufthansa Group’s chief officer of corporate human resources.

Last week’s turbulence surfaced after talks between the pilots' union and Lufthansa management resulted in a complete impasse following what the labor court viewed as an unwillingness by pilot representatives to enter into overall mediation without including the company’s plans to expand its Eurowings low-fare subsidiary as an open negotiating item.  

After the subsequent strike on September 8 that forced Lufthansa to cancel 84 out of 170 long-haul flights and threats of another walkout on Wednesday, which led to a further cancellation of another 1,000 short- and medium-haul flights, the airline filed a lawsuit against the union's labor committee and a pledge to hire no new pilots under the terms of the current collective bargaining agreement at Lufthansa German Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo or Germanwings. As a result, it said, natural attrition at the group would lead to the gradual reduction of those divisions’ fleets.

The lawsuit calls for compensatory damages associated with the pilot strike of April 2014, when the union ordered strike action against Lufthansa Cargo even though its collective labor agreement remained in force. Lufthansa Group estimates the damages resulting from that strike totaled around €60 million ($67 million).

By late on September 9 fortunes swung decidedly toward management, when a labor court ordered the pilots to cease strike activity after concluding that the motivation for the actions in fact involved the company’s plans to expand its Eurowings’ low-fare subsidiary. In overturning a lower court decision, the state labor court in Frankfurt ruled that the VC could not take strike action in reaction to the plan because the original mandate of the negotiations did not cover Eurowings’ expansion.

Over the 18 months Lufthansa pilots staged no fewer than 13 strikes, all ostensibly over the threat of the loss of early retirement benefits. The airline’s pilots can now retire at age 55 and draw 60 percent of their salary until they turn 63, at which point they become eligible for state- and employer-sponsored retirement benefits. Under increasing competitive pressure from low-fare carriers and Gulf-based majors, Lufthansa proposed raising the early retirement age for new-hire pilots from 55 to 60. However, Lufthansa has charged the union with waging a campaign of deception in its insistence that the pilots’ grievances centered on that proposal.