Lufthansa ground staff called to strike at the country’s main airports

“It is likely that flight cancellations and significant delays will occur” on Tuesday, according to the union initiating the movement.

A new call for a strike within the leading European air transport group. Lufthansa ground staff are being called to stop work on Tuesday February 20 at the main German airports to obtain salary increases. The Verdi union calls for walkouts from 4 a.m. Tuesday morning to 7:10 a.m. Wednesday, at airports in “Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne-Bonn and Stuttgart”.

“Flight cancellations and significant delays are likely to occur”, according to the union, which represents nearly 25,000 of these employees. At the beginning of February, another widely followed strike action caused the cancellation of nearly 90% of the flights initially planned by the group.

Ground staff harmed compared to pilots

This announcement comes after the failure of the third round of price negotiations between Lufthansa management and employee representatives. Verdi is demanding a 12.5% ​​increase in salaries, with at least 500 euros more immediately on the monthly pay slip. In addition, the union wants to obtain a bonus of 3,000 euros to compensate for inflation in recent years in Germany, which reached 5.9% last year, after 6.9% in 2022.

These requests go beyond the company’s proposals, which notably mentions an increase of 4% in December, before an increase of 5.5% in February 2025. Too little, according to Verdi. “While the group grants its pilots double-digit increases (…), ground staff are not even compensated for inflation”, lamented Marvin Reschinsky, who negotiates on behalf of the union. Lufthansa pilots obtained pay increases of more than 17% in total in August, putting an end to a price dispute lasting several months.