Following an outline agreement between the airline and the union that represents its pilots, KLM, the de facto Dutch flag carrier, has averted a pilots' strike.
The strike was slated to occur on September 25, 2023, according to the announcement made on September 24, 2023.
On Sunday, September 24, KLM and the Dutch Airline Pilots Association (Vereniging Nederlandse Verkeersvliegers, VNV) "reach an outline agreement on a new collective labor agreement for pilots," the airline reported.
The preliminary agreement led to the cancellation of the strike.
KLM and VNV will "further develop the outline agreement and VNV will submit it to its Members' Council" over the course of the following several days, though. If the Members' Council adopts the agreement, the two parties will have agreed to further pay increases for pilots, which will take effect retrospectively from March 2, 2023, through February 28, 2025.
KLM summed up their comments by saying, "We are pleased that we were ultimately able to achieve this result through constructive consultation."
According to the VNV, the airline took "the necessary steps to create a collective labor agreement that does justice to our reasonable wishes and proposals," and the union was delighted with that.
The union added that pilots will also receive a 2% one-time payment. The new deal implies "that a wage increase of 5.5% on average per year has been agreed over the two-year term commencing on September 1, 2023," according to the union. The money will "make up for the late commencement date of the collective bargaining agreement, which has already expired as of March 2023," according to the payment.
The new collective bargaining agreement will make it easier for pilots to schedule their time off, and future advances in pilot productivity will result in better income for KLM, according to VNV. The union continued, stating that the increase in productivity would result in "hundreds of millions of additional revenues".
One of the most crucial things, according to VNV, was to participate in discussions concerning the potential introduction of flying with fewer pilots in the cockpit in the future. "KLM and the VNV jointly confirm that the operation's safety is and remains paramount in all cases, just as it is now."
