On Monday, the pilot strike in SAS was a fact. Around 30,000 passengers are affected daily. At the same time, the strike costs the company around NOK 100 million every day. The core of the labor dispute are the two recent subsidiaries SAS Connect and SAS Link. These hire pilots and cabin crew on new terms. The SAS management says this is necessary especially to be able to compete for holiday travelers. The SAS pilots say it is a matter of circumventing the agreement SAS already has with them. It is also important whether the around 450 pilots who still have not got their jobs back after the pandemic will be offered a job in the same SAS company they were fired from with approximately the same salary and working hours as they had before, or whether they will be employed in SAS Connect with a little lower wages and slightly more working days. This is the subject of the dispute in the pilot strike The pilots are on strike because they fear loss of established working conditions if they apply for a job in SAS ‘new subsidiaries. This has been the development in recent years. Initially, the airline is owned by three national companies in Scandinavia. Photo: Torstein Bøe / NTB The goal is to save money and become more competitive. Over the years, the company struggles a lot with the economy and tries different strategies and group structures to increase profitability and lower costs. Photo: Erlend Aas / NTB Scandinavian Airlines Ireland will be based in Ireland and will compete with foreign companies, but will face opposition from the Swedish pilot association. In 2018, the company’s pilots will complain about working conditions and more will leave. 560 pilots are laid off and then dismissed, with an agreement on re-employment rights in SAS. Photo: MARTIN SYLVEST / AFP SAS Link is created. In addition, the company that was established in Ireland in 2017 will be renamed SAS Connect. Connect will be based in Copenhagen and enter into an agreement with Danish pilot associations. The pandemic is coming to an end. The pilots want to return to work, but are told to apply to the subsidiaries Link and Connect. Trade unions call it a breach of promise. Pilots are in armor and are suing SAS. Photo: Annika Byrde / NTB After months of talks, negotiations and finally mediation, the pilots go on strike. They refuse to be employed in subsidiaries with poorer working conditions than they had before the pandemic. SAS is struggling with the economy and is despairing over a strike in the middle of the high season. Photo: CHRIS ANDERSON / TT / NTB SAS and some subsidiaries are starting a court process in the USA to apply for bankruptcy protection, so-called chapter 11 petition. In practice, they can then not be filed for bankruptcy next year. This is a step in SAS’s rescue plan for its own finances. Photo: Lars Schröder / TT / NTB Danish SAS pilots warn of blockade against SAS ‘newly established subsidiary SAS Crew Services Denmark. – We do not want to risk the management doing the same thing again by moving work and production to empty companies to circumvent the agreement. They have done this before with the subsidiaries Link and Connect, says chief negotiator in Dansk Metal, Keld Bækkelund Hansen. Show more Here are the terms in SAS Scandinavia and SAS Connect, the company the pilots are now fighting against: Lower salaries Pilot captains in SAS Connect by 10 years and more in the air, get lower wages, and wage jumps every other year instead of every year. After 17 years in the air, you also hit the ceiling for basic salary in Connect. A flight captain in SAS Scandinavia with 10 years in the air earns NOK 990,506. A flight captain with the same experience in SAS Connect earns just over 899,190. After 17 years in the air as a flight captain in SAS Scandinavia, you earn NOK 1,155,534. SAS Connect earns 1,078,410. This base salary will never be higher for flight captains in Connect. The pilot strike in SAS has had major consequences for travelers this summer. Photo: Mathias Moene Rød / news SAS Scandinavia earns as much as NOK 1,336,202 after 25 years in the air. The pilots have said that they have offered to reduce wages by 5 percent in SAS Scandinavia. This halves the wage difference between Scandinavia and Connect, compared to what it is today. NB: Most SAS pilots have at least 10 years on the wings before they become captains. More working days SAS Connect has 3-6 extra working days a year, depending on which shift you are part of. Employees with a predictable shift in Connect must work 190 days a year, compared to 184 in SAS Scandinavia. In addition, this rotation looks somewhat different in Connect versus Scandinavia. In SAS Scandinavia, the pilots work five days, before they have four days off. This rotation runs throughout the year. In SAS Connect, you work five days, have four days off, work five days and have three days off. SAS pilots in Connect must be prepared to follow people’s holiday patterns, and fly more in the summer than in the winter. Photo: Simon Skjelvik Brandseth / news In the variable shift, which means that you get next month’s work list in the middle of the previous month, you work 180 days a year in SAS Scandinavia, and 183 in SAS Connect. In addition, those who work in Connect must agree to work less in the winter when it is low season, and more in the summer. They also have other rules for what is considered a weekend off. The SAS management believes that these rules allow them to carry out several flights with the same number of pilots. The pilots: It is not about collective agreements Roger Klokset, leader of the Norwegian SAS pilots’ association, says that it is not the content of the collective agreements in Connect and Link that they react to. – What we react to is that they start SAS again, and say that Connect and Link are new companies. They fly the same plane, the same passengers on the SAS routes we operated before the pandemic and say that our dismissed do not have a right of re-employment in those companies. We think that is wrong. These are our jobs, and these are our collective agreements. Roger Klokset of the Norwegian SAS pilots’ association demands that the employees who were laid off during the pandemic get their jobs back on the same terms as before. Photo: Astri Husø / news Norway’s CEO Kjetil Håbjørg at SAS says that it is a matter of restructuring SAS to suit a new market. – The new companies are adapted to a leisure market where you fly longer, on weekends and in summer. Then it is important to bear in mind that wages and working conditions are defined by the market. The pilots and the employer have to get used to it. The wise man dismisses that argument. – It’s just nonsense. All our passengers have flown with SAS both on leisure trips and on weekends. A SAS pilot can work three out of four weekends a month, seven days a week, all holidays and all holidays. – SAS aircraft will be flown by SAS pilots Klokset says an important point is that the pilots lose their seniority if they start in SAS Connect. – A pilot who changes company starts all over again, and it has now been possible to construct it by starting SAS all over again. This means that all old employees who apply for a job in one of the new companies lose all accumulated seniority, including salary seniority. According to SAS, the pilots are employed on the same terms based on experience, but not necessarily at the corresponding salary level they had. Norwegian CEO Kjetil Håbjørg at SAS says Connect and Link are intended to meet new types of markets. Photo: Trond Lydersen Håbjørg still believes that there are not the big differences between SAS Scandinavia and Connect. – The salary is good, and it is often higher, but there are other conditions adapted to another market. We need that, because the market is changing, he says. The time is right for what is needed for the parties to reach an agreement. – SAS must come to us and say that they respect the scope of our collective agreements, and that SAS aircraft must be flown by SAS pilots. Then we must agree on an amicable arrangement for how to get our dismissed back to work as soon as possible.
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These are the terms of the SAS company the pilots are fighting against – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
