oliver2002

SAS is bleeding 10 million $ cash each day of the strike: https://www.sasgroup.net/newsroom/pr...dip-financing/

Fredrik74

If only the pilots accept the offer then SAS can go back to being profitable again.

I wonder how long time it will take until they're at break even from where SAS declined the pilots' offer?

vanillabean

If only the pilots accept the offer then SAS can go back to its not so public mismanagement.

fassy

There is a HUGE difference between commission-based compensation and a fair base salary with performance based incentives (which can also include other things, not just money). And the article you quote, follows that reasoning as well.

The core is, commission is paid on volume/quantity, not on quality... and if we go back to pilots... no one in his right mind would ask to pay pilots based on commission-type model... i.e. fly a certain amount of flights to reach your quota or a software engineer with "write x lines of code". Then the metric is wrong. And what both FlyingMoose and I said is: There are good metrics to judge a pilots performance on. And they could be used to offer well performing pilots extra benefits to keep them happy and motivated, and poor performing pilots could be sorted out sooner or later. But this is a model which is rejected by unions... they want to treat both the same. Does that sound fair to you and would motivate you to belong to the better performing group?

oliver2002

During Lufthansa's conflict with the pilot over retirement funds each strike day cost them 20 million €. AFAIR they cancelled the entire schedule in blocks. The AF pilot strike was so fierce that in the end AF caved and gave the crew what they wanted.

ksu

If someone wants to run a business in Scandinavia, because it's a good market or because one for some reason prefers Scandinavian employees, one has to play by the local rules. This includes honoring legal rights to parental leave. Refusing someone a salary increase for using this right would, at least in Norway, be illegal.

ksu

Perhaps your circle is rather conform and not very diverse socioeconomically? Most peoples' are not very diverse.


You miss the point that there are three parties, with the government as a strong third party. And the consumers and taxpayers are usually employees themselves. There is a good reason that this system has stood the test of time.


The employers can and do counter and retaliate. They have "lock-out" as their weapon, and SAS is using lock-out in this conflict. The Swedish and Danish flight attendants are locked out. (The Norwegian are furloghed). And strikes are strictly regulated by law and overseen by the courts.


I don't know the Danish and Swedish procedures, but in Norway critical personell are excempted, meaning for instance that very few doctors have ever striked. And in Norway, any strike that threatens life or vital interests is stopped by the government. That was the reason the recent flight mechanics' strike was stopped (ambulance flights).


There is a part of the total that is set apart for individual negotiations, making it possible to give extra to individuals. And negotiating extra is possible, especially when starting a new job.

Good luck with that here! In any way trying to give a smaller or no raise to people who take care of their newborn would be directly illegal.

fassy

Can you please explain how a “lock-out” helps in any way? I might be too stupid but I don’t see how locking out the workforce helps the company in any way fighting (or as you say retaliate) the strike action.

And we are not talking about the Danish teachers lock-out… because a Government doesn’t really suffer from schools being shutdown as a company would by denying their staff to come to work.

As far as I see it, lots of strikes helped and made employers meet the demands to some degree. So far, I have not seen companies making use of lock-outs and actually benefited in any way from it.

ksu

I'm not sure that a lock-out is helpful. And it is certainly less common. Interestingly enough, both the term strike and the term lock-out comes from English, but strike is transcribed into Scandinavia (streik/strejk), but for lock-out one uses the English spelling, which probably is explained by the rariety. I mentioned it because the person I answered (FlyingMoose) wrote: "Striking is still an absolute tool if employers can not counter or retaliate, the system gives an unfair power balance to the unions.." Thus empøoyers HAVE a tool to counter and retaliate. Lock-out was probably much more effective in previous time, when a lock-out might mean hunger and poverty. Now large unions have large war chests, minimizing the value of that tool.

And remember: SAS are using lock-out as a tool. I see that SAS warned that they would use lock-out against non-striking staff in Sweden and Denmark in case of pilot strike. I'm not sure whether they actually implemented it. In the recent flight mechanic strike in Norway, lock-out was used - probably as a tactic to increase the consequences of the strike, so as to force the government to stop the strike (supposedly easier in Norway then in Sweden or Denmark). This tactic succeeded.

CPH-Flyer

The SAS forward target for the pilots is about 2.2M DKK per day, so about 33.8 days per day of strike if they agree to that level off efficiency increase. That's of course assuming that the pilots' strike does not cause a longer term effect on future bookings and revenue.....

CPH-Flyer

It is a monetary tool. By applying a lockout to groups not involved in the strike the unions will have to start paying benefits to these employees as well the people on strike, increasing the cost for the union coffers. Also, it reduces SK's operating costs, even if the cabin crew can't fly due to the strike salaries would be due, by applying a lockout no salaries are due from SK, and hence the unions have to pay their members

FlyingMoose

Where is the balance though? An airline not running and generating cashflow costs many times per day than staff cost for a union?

Do employees in Norway have a legal right to a raise? Lets not focus to much on my example and make it an emotional argument. The same applies to an employee taking 6 weeks of vacation vs one that does not take any vacation. The employee that adds 6 weeks of productivity should be entitled to a greater raise than the slacker that went on vacation.

What is the point though?

Has it though? Everything in Norway is disproportionately expensive? While the Norwegian situation is extremely rare because of the oil and gas revenues for the state that can fund many public services, the other two Scandinavian countries do not have the oil and gas benefits but all the same cost of living problems.

ksu

SAS knew very well that the pilots would strike if they didn't reach an agreement, so the SAS board and administration knew the consequences as well. They, and the unions, still chose a strike.

No. And the SAS pilots were willing to accept a cut larger than the raise given to other employees. There is no automatic adjustment for inflation. Any adjustment for inflation is included in the negotiated raise.

Not taking the legal vacation (4 weeks + 1 day according to law in Norway) would be illegal*. It is very telling that both examples you are using (parental leave, vacation) would be contrary to national law.


*Most employees are covered by nationally negotiated tariff agreements and have five weeks of paid vacation. Any employee over the age of 60 has an extra week on top of that. The main exemption allowing employees NOT to take their vacation, is when they have not worked long enough to have earned paid vacation, usually by starting work late in the year when starting in a new job.

fassy

Okay, so you are saying employers have a more or less useless tool to retaliate against the striking labor force by punishing the not-striking labor-force? Well, that does sound like a fair balance, doesn't it? Sure, locking out all the dependent workforce which is not part of the strike, e.g. the flight attendants, will reduce the OPEX for a moment and will make those guys hate both the pilots and the airline... but does it change anything to effectively end the strike?

I have NEVER heard that e.g. an employer said to its workforce: "Look, we are in a s&@#ty economic position, so we will cut your salary by 10% and another 3% each year for the next 3 years and if you do not agree we will lock you all out". Then, obviously the employees complained, did not agree and the company closed the doors and had the people locked out until they agreed to a 5% cut and 1% each year.

NEVER happened. The other way around.... well... quite a lot.

Let's be honest here.... employers can't do s*&@ to fight back on a strike actions besides trying to negotiate a lesser impact on the salary and benefits increase and hope the war coffers of the unions are not deep enough to carry the strike long enough to totally ruin the company. Or maybe go to court and try to argue the strike is unlawful, ...

There is NO balance.

And even worse, for a company like an airline, train operator, or other more complex modern businesses it is not just ONE group of people and ONE union like in the good old days in a steel mill. Today it is the pilot union, tomorrow the FAs, then the baggage handlers, after that the mechanics, then the catering crew, then the cleaning crew... and maybe at some point even the administrative staff (which funny enough, I never heard of strikes in the ticketing office or flight dispatch which then in turn brought the whole airline to a stop).

Also, as FlyingMoose pointed out, it is a difference if a private (or public) company has to face strikes or if it is something like the transportation sector, public health, etc. No one would really have a problem if the Volkswagen engineering department strikes for a couple of weeks. Sure, Volkswagen would... their shareholders would... but not the regular every day Joe. But if a rather small group of critical employees of a major airline strike, the impact on the society and the whole industry is tremendous. If you are really all for fairness and regulation, then these things need to be regulated by the government and contracts need to be drafted which are transparent and dependable. For both sides.

What we see here is, the capitalist driven privatization of previous state-owned infrastructure is failing. Over and over again. Look at transportation, look at health care, look at education and very relevant... look at the energy markets.

ksu

Whether certain basic services, especially in businesses needing direct or indirect subsidy or harvesting common resources, should be privatized is another matter...

Not to go too deep into the tools of the three-party workplace system in Scandinavia, but as I understand it, Norway has rather different rules from Denmark and especially Sweden. If a strike threatens health, safety or vital interests (historically interpreted rather liberally, especially in the oil industry) the governmant might stop a strike. The recent flight mechanics' strike could be seen to have been stopped by using lock-out to force the government to stop the strike. It should be noted that the system is not intended to be confrontational - all three parties are seen to have a joint goal in finding a compromise.

It should also be noted that Norway has a more liberal furlough system than Denmark and Sweden. Basically, when a business has no work for its employees - a shipyard between projects, cabin crew in an airline when the pilots strike - the employees can be furloughed. The government pays ordinary unemployment compensation, the company does not have to pay salary, and the employees can work elsewhere. When the furlogh ends, the employees have a right to be reinstated. This is seen as good for the employees (the haven't lost their job) and for the employers (the will not lose good workers who might move elsewhere, and not be available anymore). SAS could have used this system to furlough the Norwegian pilots during the pandemic. They didn't: the chose to fire them instead. This is seen by the unions as aggressive.