KLM freezes salary increases due to virus

Dutch national carrier KLM announced Thursday, August 13, it was unilaterally postponing a 2.5% salary increase across the board as the airline deals with massive losses due to the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.

KLM’s announcement comes as the airline said it was losing 10 million euros ($11.8 million) per day. 

“KLM is in a crisis of unprecedented magnitude since the outbreak of the [coronavirus],” it said, adding “our half-year results for 2020 were the worst ever.”

“To survive, KLM must take measures to lower costs,” it said, despite a 3.4-billion-euro government bailout package being approved last month.

KLM and major aviation unions last year agreed to a long-negotiated 2.5% increase in salaries, which was supposed to have been implemented this month.

“The situation then was totally different to what it is now,” the airline said, adding unions could not reach consensus about the postponement.

“Therefore KLM had no choice but to act unilaterally,” it said without giving a postponement date.

Top umbrella union FNV reacted with anger to the news, saying it could take urgent legal action to force KLM to implement the agreement.

“We are unpleasantly surprised. KLM is unilaterally scrapping an agreement and you can’t do that,” Jan van den Brink, manager at FNV’s aviation branch said in a statement.

“And as usual, it’s hitting the lower income groups the hardest,” he said. – Rappler.com