An increasing number of flights are canceled as a result of the spread of coronavirus worldwide. It is hitting the airlines hard on the economy, including SAS, which is appealing to its employees to temporarily cut wages while the corona crisis is ramping up.
The Executive Board now cuts 20 percent in salary. Now we invite all the employees of the 37 unions across the three countries to negotiate a reduction in wages and correspondingly in working hours, says SAS’s press officer in Denmark, Kristoffer Meinert.
Whether it ends with a pay cut depends on what is agreed in the negotiations that are now underway.
It depends entirely on what we can negotiate. It can be 10, 15 or 20 percent. We will try to reach the same solution for all employee groups, but it can be difficult because it is a blanket with 37 different unions and different agreements, says Kristoffer Meinert.
An attempt to limit the losses
According to the Danish press chief, the call for employees to go down in wages and working hours is another of several measures in the effort to limit the losses associated with the corona crisis.
– We try to save where we can. We have put a stop to employment, and we are doing what we can to avoid having to lay off. This is an attempt to show timely care, says Kristoffer Meinert.
He has no estimate of what the Corona crisis has cost the Scandinavian airline, but he states that there is no doubt that it has hit SAS hard on the economy and continues to do so.
Earlier today, the SAS competitor, the Norwegian low cost airline Norwegian, announced it was canceling 3,000 of its departures from mid-March to mid-June.
That’s because the company has had a hard time selling its tickets over the past week. It also means sending staff home.
Source: dr.dk
