Passenger numbers;
Credit: Luxair
Luxair, the Luxembourg government and trade unions reached an agreement on the issue of overstaffing at Wednesday's tripartite meeting for the aviation sector.
Following several previous meetings, the tripartite working group agreed yesterday on a restructuring plan to mitigate the impact of job cuts on Luxair staff concerned. All parties agreed that job cuts were needed in order to address a surplus of 600 employees.
Luxair stressed that its activity had fallen by 69% between January and September 2020, from more than one million passengers in 2019 to 323,000 this year.
As confirmed by the LCGB trade union, the tripartite agreement will make it possible to absorb half of this overstaffing through various early retirement pensions. For the remaining half, a reclassification unit will be set up whose main task will be to reclassify the employees concerned, either internally at Luxair or externally with other companies, the state or municipalities, through an individualised training plan and / or the temporary loan of labour. The government is set to spend around €50 million in the next three years on staff retraining for this purpose.
The agreement provides for a guarantee of employment and that Luxair will not make any dismissals for reasons not inherent to the person during the term of the agreement. The text regarding the details of the agreement still has to be drafted and will be presented to the various statutory bodies of the trade unions for validation.
The different parties of the tripartite agreed that the collective agreement will be an integral part of the tripartite agreement and that it will be extended for the duration of the said agreement, namely for the period 2021-23. The collective agreement will be extended in its entirety and with all benefits, except for scale increases during the term of the agreement.
The next meeting will take place on 9 November 2020, the objective of which is the signing the tripartite agreement after validation of the text by the various parties.
