Facts: That is why the SAS pilots are on strike
The pilots at SAS had previously announced a strike from 29 June because the parties had not been able to agree on a new collective agreement.
According to the Swedish Pilot Association, the strike is about SAS not re-employing the 560 pilots notified during the pandemic and that the airline instead uses pilots from the subsidiaries SAS Link and SAS Connect, which act as staffing companies.
The pilot union then believes that SAS has violated the right to re-employment contained in the collective agreement as the airline has hired replacements instead of previous employees.
Negotiations between the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish pilot associations and SAS’s management have been ongoing since November last year, but the parties have not been able to reach an agreement. The pilots’ old collective agreement expired at the end of March.
On June 9, the pilot unions submitted their strike notice to the Mediation Institute. The mediation has been going on since 13 June but was stopped on 4 July when the SAS pilots gave the message that they would go on strike.
The last time the pilots in SAS went on strike was seven days in the spring of 2019.
When SAS CEO Anko van der Werff announced that there would be a pilot strike, he was noticeably upset and talked about a “strike culture”.
– This is the sixth time in twelve years that the pilots go on strike, he said to the entire media gathering.
Why are there so many strikes within SAS? The issue is complex, according to experts.
This is partly due to the fact that the company has been pressured by the low-cost companies and that SAS pilots have historically had a very good time.
– In the 1970s and 1980s, SAS was the flag airline. They were much better off than many others, says journalist and aviation expert Jan Ohlsson.
One reason for this was the then CEO Jan Carlzon, who attached great importance to the staff and later wrote a famous leadership book entitled “Demolish the pyramids!”.
The then SAS manager Jan Carlzon presents SAS’s new graphic profile in 1983. Archive photography. The culture lives on
– The staff was the important thing. They would meet the customers. It boosted my self-confidence further and it shone through both the uniforms and the wage tariffs, says Jan Ohlsson.
According to Jan Ohlsson, that culture still lives on in the walls to some extent.
– It has not been understood that the world is completely different, he says.
He says that other major airlines in Europe, such as Air France and Lufthansa, unlike SAS, took the threat from low-cost airlines seriously early on. Today, Lufthansa operates the low-cost airline Eurowings, Air France-KLM has Transavia and Spanish Iberia has Vueling.
– With our own low-cost brands, it is easier to explain to both pilots and customers that it is something else. SAS has Link and Connect, but the plan still says SAS. They have also poked Link and Connect on a bit of everything, there are trips to everything from Alicante to Luleå and business trips to London.
Since the glory days, pilots’ real wages have fallen. Today, Jan Ohlsson estimates that they are no longer in the top five in Europe, but rather somewhere in the middle. It is not just about wages, conditions have also deteriorated.
– Before, you could have three nights in New York or two nights in Bangkok before you went home. The pilots stayed in luxury hotels in the city center. Today is a night and they live at the airport.
The pilots not the biggest problem
In Europe, the airlines have completely withdrawn from overnight stays, he says.
– The golden years are over and it also hits downwards, you really should look at the cabin crew, they have gotten much worse.
Regardless, the pilots are not SAS’s biggest financial problem, according to both Jan Ohlsson and Hans Jørgen Elnæs, aviation analysts at the consulting company Winair.
In the savings package that SAS has launched under the name SAS Forward, SEK 7.5 billion will be saved annually. Of that sum, the pilots will be responsible for savings of SEK 800 million. The rest is, among other things, leasing agreements and liabilities to aircraft suppliers.
According to Hans Jørgen Elnæs, the savings on the pilots will mainly be made by streamlining the flight routes, rather than through changed salaries.
– In Ryanair, the pilots fly 10 to 15 percent more hours per year than in SAS. This can be explained by the fact that Ryanair and other low-cost airlines have point-to-point flights, ie they fly from Stockholm to Barcelona and then back again, for example. SAS has a more complicated grid, he says.
According to Hans Jørgen Elnæs, a SAS pilot has an average annual salary, including various supplements, of around SEK 1 million. A captain who has worked for the company for many years can have a salary of up to SEK 2 million, including supplements.
– But it is important to remember that SAS was in a very serious situation in 2012, which was resolved at the last second before the deadline. Since then, the pilots have not received any real wage growth at all, he says.