Media Report July 10, 2014
SEV-GATA disappointed at Lufthansa Restructuring in Basel
SWISS swept away in Basel
Eurowings entering the market ex-Basel means it’s all over for Swiss at its head office. “Despite austerity programs and a more favourable CLA Lufthansa continues squeezing out its Swiss subsidiary,” Philipp Hadorn, president of SEV-GATA, criticizes the latest coup of the German group of companies and warns: “Further downsizing will no longer be accepted by the employees without a fight”
While Lufthansa had a press report released on innovation and a dynamic slimmed-down structure, it unsparingly announces that Swiss will be withdrawn from air transport in Basel.
“It sounds cynical, when Lufthansa-CEO, Carsten Spohr, calls his employees ‹a highly motivated part of the whole group, our Lufthansa› and a few sentences later in an internal communication he relates only to his shareholders as a value-based control,“ Philipp Hadorn, president of SEV-GATA and SEV union secretary, comments disillusioned on the latest blow of Lufthansa against its own subsidiary SWISS. SEV-GATA realizes with disappointment that SWISS is being further thinned out, although in the CLA negotiations the unions made clear concessions to increase productivity.
"The penetrating low-cost subsidiary company must not jeopardize the jobs in Basel protected in the long term,” Philipp Hadorn clarifies complaining they had again not been given the information the employer is obliged to give to both sides of industry. In his function as National Council he adds: “While in Parliament and in public Swiss social partnership is regarded as a quality label, the former flagship of Swiss aviation is now practically sold-out and withdrawn from strategic and prospective sectors – disregarding the usual way of communicating with the unions.”
SEV-GATA (Groundstaff Aviation Technics and Administration) is the aviation department of the SEV, the transport staff union. www.sev-gata.ch