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News from Brussels Airlines – CF 2018-02
Since the last print of our Cockpit Flash most of the hot topics in the company remained focused on social actions since the pilot delegation have been trying to improve our work- ing conditions for months.
To make it short, pending issues are: a better balanced rostering and days off allocation, solving the undercrew problem and getting a dedicated flight crew pension plan, increased revenue package, decent overtime payment.
Given all these demands, two days of strike were held on 14 and 16 May, which led to the cancellation of almost all flights by the company.
Thanks to that, the negotiations restarted with the hope of a quick and constructive offer to meet our demands.
Meanwhile, Mr Davignon promised to bring us a plan for the future of the company by mid-June. At the moment (October) we are still waiting for such a plan on the future of this company.
What has happened then?
1) The company recognized the under-crew prob- lem as there are more and more flights opened each month (with missing flight crews at planning time) and the reduction of “good will” to accept flights during your days off.
As a result, more pilots will be hired, unfortu- nately too late to cope with the high workload of this summer season. The fact that pilots left the company in the past months did not help either.
This can be seen as good news for our job seekers in Belgium. But we must emphasize that the plan is to force new pilots and Captains upgrading to A320 and A330 to accept new seasonal contracts (100% in summertime but 80 or even 50% 5 months a year !).
2) Our management came with a new offer, which was submitted to a pilot’s vote to assess if the pilots’ demands were met. Only one third of the pilots accepted this proposal, making it clear that we were not satisfied with it.
Despite that clear refusal, union secretaries decided to go further in the negotiation process and suspended the strike notice during the sum- mer months, probably due to political pressure. On 6 July, a vague business plan for the coming years was presented during the Workers’ Council.
This plan appears to be very weak. Basically, the information given is the same as last year, focus- ing on keeping the brand and colors and reassuring employees against job losses for the moment, but nothing about the future of the fleet and market position nor the positioning of BRU as a hub inside the Eurowings group.
In last year Lufthansa Group yearly report, Brussels Airlines (like Eurowings) is clearly identified as a “point to point carrier”, where Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian are considered as network carriers. Note that the operations to Mumbai (BOM) that started in March 2017 will stop in January 2019.
Where do we stand today?
A new proposal from the management came up. It seems however that what is given from the right hand is taken by the left hand and there are differences in the offer but no significant improvements.
This might be submitted to a new vote from the pilots but considering the lack of improvement or budget allowed for the negotiations we might reasonably assume that the results won’t be different than the previous ones.
An agreement has been signed about the FT/DT application, mainly by offering MH and LH more days off. It should improve the work/life balance and fatigue management, as this should be part of the EASA package, with a proactive and reactive approach and the use of fatigue risk management.
For all the other points nothing is done, they will (again!) have to be discussed in future meetings as it seems the union secretaries are not in line with the pilots who are unhappy with their cur- rent working conditions.
Our management seems really eager to push for a new seasonal career plan in order to cope with the seasonal aspect of the current production.
That implies that the new upgrade to Captain and ab-initios will work full time in the summer (7 months) and 60% in the winter (5 months) so an average of over 80% per year, that can be seen as an improvement of the career plan for the in house pilots but we can also see it as a cheap way to use pilots at reduced conditions.
This past month’s actuality should not make us forget other topics that BeCA is closely monitoring::
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The TCAB integration meetings have been suspended until further notice due to the high workload of the pilot’s union.
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BeCA is in contact with the representatives of the different airlines flying for Eurowings to support our members working under German contracts in Dusseldorf.
- We had a meeting with the Flight Safety Department to explain where BeCA’s flight safety unit is involved like just culture, reporting and investigations. You may think of fume/aerotoxic events as seen in the medias but also Belgocontrol failures, ASR reporting and Hotline assistance to members and many more.
The attention has also been drawn on the contractors hired through foreign agencies and on the wet leased aircraft. We want to be sure that the company is not tempted to use the aggressive low cost habits for the well-being and safety of our crews and passengers.
Integration of Thomas Cook
We would like to keep you updated on the ongoing negotiations about the merging between Thomas Cook and Brussels Airlines.
Since the official announcement of the merging by both managements more than one year ago, the big question for us pilots has been: how will both groups be able to work together knowing that the conditions are different in each company?
For us the first point to be solved is to find a solution for the seniority list, which is of utmost importance for the pilots’ career plan. Obviously both parties have different views on how to achieve this.
In order to find a common ground, BeCA has offered to both parties to meet in our office under the supervision of an external mediator, who can guarantee a neutral and global point of view on the subject. BeCA president, Alain Vanalderweireldt volunteered to assist us.
His long term experience in dealing with Belgian and foreign airlines is well appreciated around the table.
So where do we stand today?
At this time three meetings took places, progresses have been made and we expect to be able to give you some options for an integration as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, our delegates have been very busy these past few months with other subjects, includ- ing talks with our management to improve our working conditions and packages considering the current production (see Brussels Airlines update for more information).
This is obviously delaying the integration process. However this time is not really lost since finding a better deal in line with the current mixed production.
