Approximately 1,000 SAS pilots have warned of a conflict with their employer and threatened with strike in two weeks, following the breakdown of negotiations on a new labour agreement, the SAS Pilot Group in Scandinavia said.
The previous agreement with pilots actually expired on 1 April this year, with no replacement.
During the negotiations, SAS required, among others, a deterioration of working conditions, with wage reductions, increased working hours, reduced rest periods and abolished summer holidays.
According to the head of the Swedish Pilot Union, Martin Lindgren, the pilots are left withouth a choice. He claimed that the SAS management “abused the pandemic to lay off nearly 600 SAS pilots” to subsequently offer them “new” jobs through internal mailbox companies and threaten to do the same to the rest. He called this action “completely unacceptable” from a large employer in Scandinavia.
In the worst-case scenario, the strike may undermine summer holidays for many passengers and wreck the ailing company's hopes for recovery, experts said.
According to Jacob Pedersen, head of equity research at Sydbank, this may paralyse large parts of the airline.
“If the pilots strike in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, only a modest part of the SAS flights can be completed. This will mean that the traffic itself will be virtually shut down, and it is really expensive for SAS every single day the strike will be running”, Pedersen told TV2.
The news comes at a difficult time for the troubled airline, which has bee posting losses for several quarters running. Currently, it seeks to restructure its business by undertaking large cost cuts, raising new cash and converting debt to equity as part of a plan to rescue itselffrom collapse.
SAS press manager in Denmark, Alexandra Lindgren Kaoukji, called the strike warning “careless”, suggesting that it “showed a shocking lack of understanding of the critical situation in which SAS finds itself”. According to her, the pilots chose “conflict over negotiations”.
Earlier this week, the Swedish state, the co-owner of the airline, announced that it would close its coffers after giving billions of kronor in relief packages. This occurred in a tumultuous time, when experts and SAS's own management alike have floated the perspective of bankruptcy.
According to Jacob Pedersen from Sydbank, the pilots' strike warning is likely intended to mount additional pressure on SAS management.
“There is no doubt that this hits SAS really, really, really hard. The Swedes just backed out of maintaining their ownership stake. You are in a situation where you have to try to attract lots of capital, and the impression of unity that should be looks very bad”, Pedersen concluded.
The pan-Scandinavian flag carrier SAS is currently co-owned by the Swedish and Danish governments, which control 21.8 percent each. Before the pandemic, SAS operated 180 aircraft to 90 destinations. Its main hubs featureCopenhagen Kastrup, Stockholm Arlanda, and Oslo Gardermoen.