Finnair, in an attempt to restore profitability by reducing unit costs and strengthening unit revenues, has initiated change negotiations with its cabin crew in Finland. The negotiations include the airline’s plan to subcontract inflight service to partners on routes to and from Thailand and US.
If realised, the subcontracting plan could result in reducing up to 450 jobs in Finnair’s Inflight services. Finnair currently employs approximately 1750 cabin crew members in Finland. The cabin service for Finnair’s Singapore, Hong Kong, and India routes as well as for the Doha routes from Stockholm and Copenhagen is already provided by Finnair’s partners.
Topi Manner, CEO of Finnair, said: “Our target continues to be to find a savings solution together with our cabin crew. We now need a genuine will from the negotiators to find solutions that would allow us to continue inflight service with our own crew, and avoid redundancies. Discussion on alternative solutions is a vitally important part of the change negotiations process.”
The change negotiations will start on November 23 and are estimated to last at least six weeks. A social support program to help those who could lose their work in re-employment will be discussed in the negotiations. Possible subcontracting would be implemented by the end of 2023.
Finnair made considerable losses during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the closure of Russian airspace significantly impacts Finnair’s ability to generate profit.
In the past, Finnair has already discussed the possibility of achieving savings by changing the employee terms with the staff.
For cabin crew, Finnair had proposed changes for example to crew utilization efficiency, layover hotel rules, and additional pay-per-hour rules for long flights, as the closure of Russian airspace has made the flight times to Asia considerably longer. Unfortunately, a solution was not found with the cabin crew in Finland.