Passengers have been streaming back to Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) after its lengthy pilots’ strike finally ended. Now the airline also needs to secure an agreement with its flight attendants, who claim they haven’t had a raise since 2012.
“Our goal is to get higher pay, not least higher base pay that we can live off of,” Martinus Røkkum of the trade union federation Parat Kabinforbund/SAS Norge Kabin forbund told news service E24. “Our pay has stood still since 2012.”
He claimed the unions have long been keen to start negotiations, but SAS isn’t calling them in for talks until mid-September. They’ll have two weeks to settle on a new contract and avoid yet another strike at the airline. SAS officials confirmed the looming negotiations, but had no further comment about its own goals.
The airline finally came to term with its pilots after a particularly long and bitter strike that dragged on for 15 days, cancelled around 3,700 flights and cost more than NOK 1 billion. Last week the airline, which filed for protection from creditors under the US bankruptcy code just a day after the pilots’ strike began, secured a loan agreement for USD 700 million. The so-called “debtor in possession” financing from Apollo Global Management of the US has been described as “expensive” for SAS but also “necessary in the situation SAS is in now.” It could leave Apollo as a major investor in SAS, but analyst Jacob Pedersen told E24 that he thinks Apollo mostly wants to make money by saving SAS and is unlikely to become a long-term investor.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
