//
you're reading...
France, Greece

Greek tragedy befalls French cabin crew

French airline Air Méditerranée is sacking 85 workers and wants French based pilots and cabin crew to be hired on cheaper contracts by its recently established Greek subsidiary Hermès Airlines.

Moving onto Greek contracts means a 30% pay cut. A flight attendant currently on Euros 1,200 a month would now get Euros 900. The chief steward would get Euros 3,600 instead of Euros 6000. But they will be doing the same job: crewing the same flights departing from France to various parts of the Mediterranean.

The CEO and main shareholder of the company Antoine Ferretti insists competition from Eastern Europe and wage levels in France  have forced his hand. He points to big losses in 2010 and 2011, but he’s not talking about the profits made over the years from 1997 when the company was launched.

Denis Roumier of the pilots’ union SNPL points out that the company already pays the lowest salaries in the sector. Questions are instead being asked as to whether the real problem is not labour costs, but the cost of capital – the money that the CEO and other senior managers have pocketed, rather than investing it or putting some aside for rainy day like now.

The issue is making the news, as offshoring or ‘delocalisation’ are at the centre of the Presidential election debate. All the candidates are making visits to companies and factories under threat of closure, including Lejaby (lingerie), Pétroplus (refinery) Photowatt (solar power) and ArcelorMittal (steelmaker).

Right-wing incumbent Sarkozy has been trying to get the French to forget his broken promise to cut unemployment which has instead increased to over 10%. And he has hauled in his billionaire friends to make promises of rescue plans.

The socialists’ François Hollande, frontrunner to succeed Sarko, is promising to introduce laws that ban the closure of sites that are profitable and where delocalisation plans are found to be based on taking advantage of lower wages abroad.

The airline’s employees, meanwhile, aren’t waiting for the outcome of the election. With the company having already substituted 50% of the French personnel with Greek employees, they’ve not choice but to step up their game. The SNPNC-FO cabin crew union call a strike on Wednesday in protest.

About revoltingeurope

Writer on Europe's Left, trade union and social movements @tomgilltweets or @revoltingeurope

Discussion

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Twitter Updates

  • @thecsp stewards-Mark Int'l Women's Day by completing workplace maternity / flexibly working survey. Closes March 11 snapsurveys.com/wh/s.asp?k=145… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @StatewatchEU: Refugee crisis: latest news from across Europe (21 news stories, documents and commentaries, 22-23.12.15) https://t.co/dP… 2 months ago
  • Tax Transparency Now: I've signed a petition calling on EU finance ministers to crack down on corporate tax dodging waronwant.org/cbc 3 months ago
  • Spanish General Election: Radical left Podemos + United Left (6m) overtakes, by half million votes, socialists (5.5m) at national level 3 months ago
  • RT @AlbertoNardelli: Spain election - voter turnout: 73.21%, from 68.94% in 2011. #20D 3 months ago
  • RT @ronanburtenshaw: #Podemos win the Basque Country and Catalonia, second in Madrid, third in Andalucía. #SpanishElections 3 months ago
  • RT @nickdearden75: Thousands listen to @MhairiBlack and @HackneyAbbott outside parliament. Both say #DontBombSyria https://t.co/cOwRe5ANPR 3 months ago
  • RT @kmflett: Sue Jones tells socialist history seminar early modern pirates memoirs dont mention sex but do note dolphin was more edible th… 4 months ago
  • RT @NelsonKevan: Women, communists and foreigners: the forgotten heroes of Paris, 1945 | via @Telegraph telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews… 4 months ago
  • Greece’s 50 First Days Under the New Government In Numbers. greece.greekreporter.com/2015/11/12/gre… greece.greekreporter.com/2015/11/12/gre… 4 months ago
Follow @tomgilltweets

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

DATA

Anti-social Europe in numbers

WAGES SLIDE

Key facts and figures on wages across the EU

Wealth Inequality in Europe

Get the key facts and figures

RADICAL VOICES

A different take on European issues

Italy’s Healthcare Crisis

Health services are ‘close to collapse’ in Rome, Turin and Naples after years of cuts and privatisation.

550 days, 29 Workers, Zero Job Losses

How a few determined Italian women stopped their factory closing and protected their livelihoods

Filthy Rich

France's Bernard Arnault of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) empire is worth $41 billion. Check out Europe's rich list

SANTA DRAGHI’S COMING

Private banks receive half-trillion-euro gift from ECB

POPULAR FIGHTBACK

Workers and citizens stand up for themselves

FLORENCE’S BUS LUMACA

Workers are on a go-slow over privatisation

Popular resistance delivers results

Lessons from the victory against Madrid privatisation plan

FRENCH FACTORY OCCUPATION

Hundreds of workers occupied the factory of ArcelorMittal in Florange in the north of France

RSS Watching Corporate Europe

  • Job opening: Media Outreach Coordinator
  • TTIP: "Regulatory Cooperation" a threat to democracy
  • EFSA appoints a food industry lobbyist as Communications Director and refuses to disclose why it did

RSS Fight discrimination in Europe – Amnesty Int’l

  • Listen to Roma Rights
  • Poland abandoning hundreds of victims of hate crimes

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

in Italy the home is a very dangerous place to be

LABOUR RIGHTS

Follow Revolting Europe on WordPress.com

Top Clicks

  • bloomberg.com/billionaire…
  • socialistnetwork.org/the-…
  • bloomberg.com/billionaire…
  • oecd.org/document/40/0,37…
  • bloomberg.com/billionaire…

Subjects

Meta

EUROPE NEEDS A CITIZENS’ REVOLUTION

Read the statement by Lafontaine and Melenchon

The Troika in Portugal – Three Years On

A success story?

THE EURO

The Dossier

FRANCE

GERMANY

GREECE

ITALY

PORTUGAL

SPAIN