Lufthansa strikes harming the image of the company
It was yesterday, october 29th, when I went to Francfort airport with my aunt, who wanted to spend some time with her relatives in Francfort and fly back to her home country, when I noticed what was going on in the famous Francfort international airport: Lots of angry people, wearing yellow neon vests, raising signs with demands on them, making a lot of noise with whistles and shouting all around. Someone was using a megaphone to make even more noise and to speak out loud what the crowd was thinking. Ah [sigh], Cockpit. UFO. The people were employees of the famous Lufthansa airline, who were demonstrating for better salaries. While I was trying to find my way through the noisy crowd, in order to get to the office of the airline (because I had to rebook another flight for my aunt, since the original one was cancelled), I noticed that hardly any other person was paying attention to the employees. Passengers, guests, visitors, other employees passed the demonstrants, being rather disfavored, almost annoyed.
Later that day, I went home. I was annoyed, too. I cannot understand how those employees could destroy the prestige of the famous airline and demonstrate again and yet again. So I did some research; I wanted to know, if I was the only one who had that negative impression towards the airline. Besides I was sure, that at the airport, there were many other people, most of them travellers, who do not support neither the union, nor the employees. And here is what I found:
The “Süddeutsche” described in the article the situation between the union, the employees and the airline. I read about numbers: an increase between 2 and 4% of the salaries. I was not satisfied. The article presented internal economic information about the salaries, but I was rather interested in the oppinion of people like you and me. People who do not know anything about the working conditions, payments and so on. And people, who are hardly interested in those issues. So I searched for other material:
I found an article in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” which presented the countermovement of the UFO and Cockpit demonstrations. The article described how many random people like you and me, ‘victims’ of the numerous demonstrations of the unions, gathered around the employees and union members, trying to make them stop harming the prestige of the airline. I think that this article is far more interesting to read for customers and travellers, since we are more interested in solving the problem and finally reaching destinations, rather than being informed about internal matters…