Air France: management unable to guarantee Christmas flights


The company is advancing blindly: if the strike finally takes place, it will only know the extent of it 48 hours before, when the personnel taking part in the movement will be obliged to declare themselves (above, counters at the airport Roissy-Charles de Gaulle). Thibault Camus/AP

A strike by stewards and hostesses from December 22 to January 2 has been threatening since mid-November. No agreement has been reached so far.

Will Air France planes fly at Christmas? Will passengers who have booked a ticket to New York, Mauritius or Nice be able to board an aircraft? As the holidays begin at the end of the week, no one has the answer. Management hoped that the strike notice running from December 22 to January 2 would be lifted. It missed.

At the end of last week, the two majority unions of stewards and air hostesses (SNGAF and Unac) calling for a stop to work reiterated their slogan, launched in mid-November. “We maintain our notice because nothing has changed for three weeks», Declare in chorus Sébastien Portal, general secretary of the SNGAF and Anne Vildy, general secretary of the Unac.

The reason for their bloodshed? When the agreement setting the conditions of employment of flight attendants and air hostesses expired at the end of October, the company extended it with a simple management note. “However, management can modify this note unilaterally overnight, which would mean changing our schedules or our remuneration rules without consulting us., believes Anne Vildy. To convince the staff representatives that this was not the case, the company undertook not to modify anything until the end of negotiations on a new agreement, scheduled for the end of March at the latest.

In addition, she presented the unions last week with case law from the Court of Cassation indicating that a fixed-term management note could not be modified. “But in this case, the company issued an indefinite management note, which does not give us any protection”says Sébastien Portal.

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A blow to Air France’s image

Of course, the two parties still have a little over a week to come to an agreement and avoid a strike. And even if we came to such an end, no one knows how big the movement would be. After all, in September, Air France granted a 5% increase and a bonus of 1,000 euros per employee. It prevents. This strike threat shows that the social consensus built by the boss of Air France-KLM, Benjamin Smith, is fragile. That the company known in the past for its repeated social conflicts may not have finished with its old demons.

A blow to the image of the company. Especially since she does not speak to her clients about this possible strike. No message on social networks to reassure them. The carrier advances blindly on this subject: if the strike finally takes place, it will only know the extent of it 48 hours before, when the personnel participating in the movement will be obliged to declare themselves.

Do not panic so far: it is likely that if this strike were very followed, passengers on long-haul flights, where there is no alternative to the plane, would suffer little from the consequences. Reserve personnel are numerous and partnerships with foreign carriers make it easier to reassign customers to other flights. Cancellations would be more numerous on domestic flights, where there are alternatives to flying.

But, from a commercial point of view, the strike would constitute a tile: in this period of strong traffic, the shortfall would be enormous. Especially since reservations are dynamic again. This risk, Air France will have to live with for a few months. The time that a new agreement concerning the stewards is signed. Some subjects under discussion are very eruptive: thus, the unions are opposed to the management’s plan which would like flight personnel to take care of 50 passengers instead of 48 on long-haul flights.

The discussions had stumbled on this question in 2021. And fourteen meetings since the start of the school year have not made it possible to find a compromise. Not sure that the first quarter of 2023 will be more conducive to peaceful discussions when the professional elections designating the representatives of the stewards and air hostesses will take place from February 13 to March 6.

SEE ALSO – Air France criticized for the attitude of its crews during flight incidents



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