Star Alliance Ground Staff Unions

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The first meeting of ITF unions organising aircraft maintenance workers in the Star Alliance was held in Hamburg on 8-10 April, 1998. The meeting discussed the impact of the Star Alliance on aircraft maintenance jobs. One session of the meeting was addressed by Wolfgang Mayrhuber, chairman of Lufthansa Technik, who faced a question and answer session from the participants. Later participants toured the Lufhthansa Technik maintenance facilities.

During the three day meeting participants compared current trends being faced by aircraft maintenance workers in Star Alliance member airlines Lufthansa, United Airlines, SAS, Ansett and Air New Zealand. The meeting reached the following key conclusions:

• aircraft maintenance is undergoing a period of global restructuring
• many airlines are contracting out maintenance work
• aircraft maintenance is becoming dominated by large companies involved in either aircraft manufacture or parts and equipment manufacture such as Boeing and GEC
• airline alliances are being used in different degrees for various forms of co-operation and reorganisation of aircraft maintenance work within alliances
• the example of Lufthansa Teknik demonstrates that alliances can expand activities in certain areas and create new jobs
• the increased mobility of some forms of aircraft maintenance and the notion of maintenance "centres of excellence" within alliances has increased the sense of job insecurity among employees although unions are ready to negotiate fair exchanges of work between maintenance facilities
• international "bench-marking" is being used as a means to force down conditions and change working practices
• there are general trends of increased work intensity and increased labour flexibility

The unions agreed a structure of contact persons for sharing information rapidly. It was agreed to collect some immediate data on pay and conditions. The meeting requested the ITF to organise a future conference on the global restructuring of aircraft maintenance work.

For an online version of the speech, see below.

During the joint meeting in September 2000 in Chicago, union representatives from 11 countries elected Linda White from the Australian Services Union as Coordinator.

Related documents:
Lufthansa Technik Chairman addresses first ITF Star Solidarity Alliance Aircraft Maintenance Meeting (19kb PDF)

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