Collective labor agreement consultation

At De Unie, the concern about the lack of any progress in the collective labor agreement negotiations is as great as ever. During the start of the two-day multi-meeting, CFO Bas Brouns again gave an update on KLM’s financial situation. The conclusion is that the situation is not much different from last year. The current results are insufficient to finance the ambitious investment agenda, especially in the new fleet, at the planned pace. There is no difference of opinion about that. What there is a difference of opinion about is how KLM wants to improve its results. And that discussion has not changed.

KLM is sticking to its chosen path and also wants to reduce costs within the land domain by improving productivity (including the elimination of jobs and the ‘modernisation’ of Annex 15) and the ‘zero line’. For us, this is an impassable road. Many measures from Back on Track, such as increasing KLM’s earning capacity and reducing absenteeism, are actually ‘business as usual’. Nothing is stopping KLM. In addition, KLM must mainly try to make full use of the network by getting the capacity in order. And you don’t solve that problem by cutting back on the terms of employment of ground staff…

To get out of the impasse in the collective labor agreement consultations, KLM has hired two ‘facilitators’. After having spoken to all the unions separately, we started yesterday with a conversation about what they consider to be the four most important dilemmas. We ended this conversation yesterday – as ground unions together – when it became clear how great the impact was of KLM’s press release about the proposed reduction of 250 jobs in the office organization.

No forced redundancies

Last Tuesday, KLM informed us – under strict embargo – of a reduction of 250 jobs, whereby forced redundancies are not excluded. We have not received more information than stated in the press release.

We therefore immediately drew KLM’s attention to Article 4.3 of the collective labor agreement. It states: “KLM undertakes not to take a decision on redundancy of a collective nature without consultation with the employees’ organizations. Without prejudice to the legal rights of the Works Council, the employees’ organizations will be regarded in the first instance as the advisory body.”

In response to this, KLM has announced that we will be further informed as soon as the requests for advice are complete. We think this is too late, because we want to be able to answer the questions of our members and also want to be able to influence the proposed decisions on the basis of Article 4.3 of the collective labor agreement.

We also immediately informed KLM that we will oppose forced redundancies. We do not believe that this is in line with the search for solutions to KLM’s current challenges and is not in line with the balance between the domains that KLM is supposed to monitor.

Reinier Castelein, chairman of De Unie, also spoke out yesterday about the proposed decision:

“KLM has unpleasantly surprised us with the announcement that it is going to cut 250 jobs. These are indirect staff of which KLM has unilaterally determined that these employees can leave.”

“It is not KLM’s to communicate in this way about forced redundancies on this scale. The collective labor agreement neatly agrees how unions and KLM should discuss this. That conversation has not yet taken place.”

Read the full message here .

So much for this message.

As always, we are curious about your reactions. Do you have any questions or would you like to let us know what you think of the situation? Then send a message to huug.brinkers@unie.nl.

And for your colleagues who are not yet members of De Unie, convince them of the usefulness of membership of a modern and contemporary employee organization like De Unie. Together we stand up for your interests. This is desperately needed right now!