Viralproject – Varieties of Industrial Relations in Aviation Lockdown

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25 May 2023VIRAL Project Final Conference, 8 June 2023

25 May 2023
VIRAL Project Final Conference, 8 June 2023

Join us online, live, for the concluding conference of the VIRAL project. Hosted at the prestigious European Economic and Social Committee, this event will bring together project partners, policymakers and social partners from the EU to discuss how best to relaunch the sector, leveraging

31 July 2023
Global Workplace Law & Policy

On 25 January 2023, the European Commission published its proposal for strengthening social dialogue. In this post, we argue that EU aviation is a pivotal sector in which social dialogue must not only be utilised, but also flourish. Our argument draws from the way in which this sector has lurched from crisis to crisis in the 21st century’s fledgling years. Consider that in the 21st century alone, aviation has faced several crises: the attacks on the United States

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

Varieties of Indutrial Relations in Aviation Lockdown

BACKGROUND

This project aims to improve the expertise and knowledge of industrial relations through activities of analysis and research in a crucial European business, particularly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, such as the air transport sector and its value chain. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on air transport sector has been very telling, affecting low cost and legacy airlines equally. During the Covid-19 crisis, airlines have seen their capacity reduced by between 95 to 98 percent, and therefore thousands of employees along the air transport value chain have been laid off or put on short time working.

Flight capacity has fallen by over 40% with a 44% drop in passenger revenue compared to 2019 (International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)’s Civil Aviation Secretary Gabriel Mocho Rodriguez, ‘Governments, employers and unions must act together to save aviation’, 1 June 2020). The opportunity to restructure has been taken. Within days of the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic (11 March 2020), KLM announced job restructuring of between 1500 and 2000 workers (Eurofound, 2020). Lufthansa announced on 11 June 2020 that it plans to lay off 22,000 of its 135,000 employees, with around German workers constituting about half the layoffs. Air France announced on 17 June 2020 job reductions of between 7000-10,000 (Eurofound, 2020). In this context on the move, a key role could be played by Industrial Relations and the support that governments intend to give to address employment problems and deteriorating working conditions in the sector (Ricardo, 2019; Gent University, 2015) in view of its reorganisation.

OBJECTIVES

To identify measures to reduce the impact of Covid-19 on the air transport sector, government programmes directly targeting airlines and airports in the countries covered by the project will be identified, as well as cross-sectoral programmes from which these entities could benefit. The scope and type of support will be explored taking account of possible differences in reactions between traditional and low-cost airlines. A vital consideration for VIRAL project involves mapping job market and employment practice changes in the European air transport value chain as a thew consequence of the lockdown and plans to re-invigorate the industry in the coming years.

For example, this project investigates the impact of Covid-19 on atypical jobs, such as pilots and stewardesses, airport service, closure of restaurants and shops located at the airports. An interesting issue concerns how the airline carriers selected and dismissed employees; that is, to what extent factors such as age, single parents (among others) influenced these decisions. Although social partners at a national level have negotiated and implemented measures to secure the industry’s short-term future, the role of trade unions is of consideration in VIRAL with a view to the strategic relaunch of the whole sector and its long-term sustainability. The project VIRAL will study the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on employment levels as well as working conditions in the air transport sector and its value chain. This issue has to be elaborated both in regard to a short-term perspective (such as the current scale of dismissals), but also according to a long-term outlook which considers the influence on the job security and prospects in the European air transport value chain. Due to the Covid-19 crisis within the European air transport value chain, analysis will consider the different measures and procedures undertaken for its short- (during the lockdown) and long-term (post-lockdown) future, in the interdisciplinary (economic, socio-legal, industrial relations) perspective, considering technological and environmental challenges. The role of the various national industrial relations systems in mitigating the short-term effect of Covid-19 and in the ‘relaunching’ of the European air transport value chain facing structural challenges of global competition as well as sustainability, will be focused and compared.

ACTIVITIES

Within the VIRAL project will be analyzed the economic situation of the air transport sector and its value chain in Europe with the aim to map and provide a background for the diagnosis of economic problems faced by the sector during the Covid-19 crisis. Furthermore, the analysis of industrial relations in the air transport sector in Europe and project partner countries pre-Covid-19 will be also focused to identify the contribution of industrial relations (if any) to the recovery and restructuring of the air transport sector in the framework of European social and environmentally sustainable goals (after Covid) and to check the role of the public actor in supporting the recovery and reorganisation of the sector.