LOT must cut employment.
“The restructuring plan will fail without cooperation with trade unions. We need to find agreement with pilots in the first place”, Dariusz Nowak, LOT CEO said.
The trade union of pilots demands raises and some dozen thousands days of due holidays. It threatens with a strike.
Within the union, however, the supporters and opponents of tough negotiations quarreled. Krzysztof Zbroja, the head of the union, resigned yesterday. He was against tough politics against the management. Now, the strike seems just a matter of time. The lowest wage of LOT pilot amounts to PLN 18,000 (EUR 5,562). The management was ready to raise it by 5 percent this and further 5 percent next year. The trade union’s new management demands a 30 percent raise.
In addition, trade unions want to delay the privatization process till the year 2010. LOT is supposed to be listed on the WSE in the first half of 2009.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.309)