The Hague, Netherlands—The future of a multi-billion-euro bailout keeping Dutch national carrier KLM afloat was thrown into disarray Saturday after unions declined to sign what they termed a “last minute” change to conditions for the deal.
Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra gave KLM and unions representing pilots, cabin and ground crew until 12:00 p.m. (1100 GMT) to sign an agreement to unlock the 3.4 billion euro ($3.9 bn) injection into the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM.
The bitter feud centers around a clause in the agreement being negotiated between KLM and the Dutch government which asks the troubled airline’s staff to take salary cuts for the next five years.
KLM this week presented the Finance Ministry with the austerity plan, which demands a 15-percent cut in costs and will see 5,000 jobs being shed as a result of the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic on air travel.
It included an agreement from unions to cut pilots’ salaries until March 2022 and ground and cabin crew salaries until the start of 2023.
But Hoekstra on Friday turned down the plan, insisting on salary cuts to run concurrently with the government’s five-year bailout package.
“We have not signed,” a VNV representative told AFP shortly after the deadline passed.
“We had an agreement in place with KLM on October 1 and now they (the government) are going back on it,” said the representative, who declined to be named.
“A deal is a deal,” he said.
Umbrella union organization FNV have also not signed, Dutch news reports said, adding talks were still under way on Saturday.
FNV was not immediately available for comment.
Some 3,000 pilots within the airline are said be the hardest hit by the austerity plan, with salary cuts of up to 20 percent, Dutch news reports said.
Other unions, however, have signed the deal including cabin crew union and the aerospace technicians’ union, saying keeping KLM flying was the first priority.
“We’re staring at the bottom of the barrel,” Dutch Union of Aerospace Technicians (NVLT) chairman Robert Swankhuizen told the RTL Nieuws private broadcaster.
“Squabbling any longer jeopardizes state aid,” he said.
Hoekstra’s spokeswoman Hayat Eltalhaui told AFP talks were still under way with KLM on Saturday afternoon.
Air France-KLM posted a net loss of 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) for the third quarter, compared with a 363 million euros profit year-on-year.
