Unions launch 'same team, same rights' campaign

Unions launch 'same team, same rights' campaign

5 July 2011 - Trade unions will launch a campaign to achieve minimum standards for flight concessions for all workers in Skyteam airlines and their subsidiaries tomorrow.

The ‘same team, same rights’ initiative is backed by ITF-affiliated unions representing workers in Skyteam members and beyond, and begins as the Unite union meets with KLM management to negotiate a solution that would give every employee at Cobalt decent flight concessions.

ITF civil aviation secretary Gabriel Mocho said: “This campaign has grown out of our determination that the multinational, joint nature of the airline alliances must be reflected by equally coordinated representation of the rights of the workers in them.”

“Recent events at ground handler Cobalt, which operates out of Heathrow Terminal 4, have thrown this into stark relief. There, Unite has told us, new workers get no flight concessions, while for others there’s a whole mix of conditions, depending on which airline they came from. Recently, management at the company HQ in the Netherlands took some and put them on inferior terms, then decided that in fact everyone who had flight concessions would now get less of them. Unite has now persuaded the company to suspend those decisions while urgent talks are held. Unite and those workers deserve, and will get, our support.”

The campaign will draw attention to the situation at Skyteam, as well as to the social and economic benefits that flight concessions bring to airlines, as the Cobalt talks begin.

ENDS

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