Strike won’t hit Easter-holiday travel, Air New Zealand assures customers

Air New Zealand, the national airline and flag carrier of New Zealand and the country’s largest airline, has sought to assure its customers that a strike planned by flight attendants at the start of the Easter holidays will not affect their holiday-travel plans.

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), the largest union at Air New Zealand, has announced that flight attendants will strike work from April 8, 2009, to April 11, 2009, after efforts to arrive at an agreement on pay failed.
The threatened strike is feared to hit Air New Zealand’s flights to Australia and some islands in the Pacific. However, no domestic flights or long-haul flights would be adversely affected.

In a press release, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union said that about 250 workers, who were hired by Zeal 320 Limited, a unit of Air New Zealand, failed to reach an agreement with the airline even after six months of talks. The union alleged that the flight attendants with Zeal 320 Limited were paid less than their colleagues hired directly by Air New Zealand.
The flight attendants had rejected Air New Zealand’s offer of a 4.5% pay hike for 15 months and the union is demanding a base salary increases of 26%, the airline said in a statement.
Strachan Crang, EPMU’s national aviation organiser, said in the press release that “the workers simply wanted a fair deal” and that “all we have heard from Air New Zealand are absurd attempts to portray our members as overpaid and unreasonable.” He alleged that the figures the airline quoted were inflated and did not take into account “the thousands of dollars of work-related costs our members have to bear to meet company policy.”
Air New Zealand’s statement added that it “will not be intimidated by or yield to industrial action by greedy unions that are out of touch with reality” particularly at a time when the global economy is melting down and “people around the world are thankful for employment.”

The newspaper New Zealand Herald quoted Bruce Parton, group general manager of Air New Zealand, as telling reporters: “The airline has gone above and beyond during negotiations to reach a realistic settlement with the Zeal crew. Our offer of a 4.5% pay raise for 15 months was extremely generous when set against the backdrops of the global economic meltdown.”
If the workers had accepted Air New Zealand’s offer, Parton, added, they would have earned between $40,000 and $60,000 a year for working 30 hours a week.
He also charged the employees of Zeal 320 Limited with attempting “to hold the Easter plans of holidaymakers to ransom.”

Air New Zealand had “completed planning and we expect our significant contingency efforts will mitigate the EPMU’s efforts to ruin the travel of holidaymakers who are looking forward to a well-earned break over Easter,” the New Zealand Herald quoted Bruce Parton as saying.