Air France offers ‘rest breaks’ to defiant staff

Bloomberg

After an attempt to play hard ball with defiant staff failed to end a bitter labour conflict, Air France is now trying a softer approach.
The embattled carrier’s latest offer to workers: more rooms for rest breaks.
At meetings with union representatives, who have called for a fresh round of strikes, management pledged to spend more to improve working conditions. The French arm of Air France-KLM said it would renovate and add staff rooms at Orly airport near Paris and take a “new approach to staff concerns and dialogue.”
The move didn’t go down well with two unions. “It’s a joke,” SPAF pilot union representative Gregoire Aplincourt said. “I don’t see how I can come back to pilots and ask them to lift the strike with these bizarre promises.”
Air France-KLM is still reeling from the resignation last month of Chief Executive Officer Jean-Marc Janaillac, who had staked his job on workers accepting his final offer on pay in a company-wide referendum. After they rejected it, the Paris-based carrier appointed an interim management team and unions decided on a new round of strikes from June 23-26.

Summer Strikes
Air France-KLM’s board won’t resume talks with unions before new top executives are appointed, the company said in its statement. In an interview published by
Les Echos, interim non-executive Chairman Anne-Marie Couderc was quoted as saying the company wants to pick a new CEO by July 15 and that the board won’t issue a mandate to negotiate on wages before the new management is in place.
Unions had expected the interim management would at least offer a 3.65 percent wage increase for 2018 and 2019, an option that had been under discussion in the past few days, according to Aplincourt, who said this was getting closer to workers’ demands.
Instead, the promises for staff rooms, new printers and parking spots “aren’t up to the challenge,” CGT union representative Vincent Salles said. “We’re puzzled by these proposals.”
This week’s planned walkouts would escalate a costly labour conflict just as the busy summer travel season in Europe gets underway. Already, 15 days of strikes that began February 22 have cost the company 300 million euros. The 10 unions representing pilots, cabin crew and ground personnel demanded a pay raise of at least
5 percent this year, as they seek a share of Air France-KLM’s 2017 profit increase.