Airline employees face drastic pay cuts

TALLINN - Estonian Air recently announced its decision to lower the wages of its pilots and its flight attendants by one third. As reported by Aripaev online, trade unions do not plan to accept this decision sitting down, and the chairman of the trade union, Rauno Menning, has said that the union will turn to the Labor Disputes Committee with a complaint against the airline, and if that does not succeed, the trade union will turn to the courts.
Menning also pointed out that the airline’s plan had not been discussed in advance with the trade union, violating the information and consultation orders.

Andrus Aljas, Estonian Air president, justified the wage reduction as due to the overall economic situation and the decrease in customer demand. He also said that employers have the right to reduce working hours. However, he refused to say by how much the company would save by these wage cuts, at 30 percent for three months.

After the news about the cuts was released, Latvian national carrier airBaltic made an announcement bringing up the possibility that they could be interested in hiring some of the employees who now work for the Estonian company.
After a profitable 2009 and with a positive outlook for 2010, airBaltic is expanding its network of direct routes to Western Europe, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean region, and to CIS countries, and continues to hire more professionals. For 2009, airBaltic has announced a 20 million euro preliminary profit, with 6 percent passenger growth, to 2.7 million passengers. According to the airline, in 2010 the company will open at least nine new direct routes from Riga.