The airline cabin personnel in the largest airline company in Norway (SAS Braathens) announced that a strike was a fact in the early hours today.
There have been constant troubles with the air traffic in the recent year. This involves strike from air traffic controllers and illegal actions from the cabin personnel in question (officially everybody just happened to be ill at the same day. With that kind of statistics they should play the lottery)
This strike happens even after the personnel is given a 5 per cent general price increase, a number I hope is far above what other employees get for the sake of the consumer price index. They also get a reduction in the working hours totaling at nearly a week.
The mean salary of the employees that now strike is above 60,000 USD and the wages are on average 25 per cent higher than the nearest competitors offer. The gliding average of the wage increase over the past two years has been more than 8 per cent.
So what does the personnel ask for?
They ask for a general wage increase of 10 per cent and that the number of working days to be reduced from 194 to 172 a year, an additional 5 weeks of vacation. The ordinary working year in Norway is 221 days. They also want a full retirement plan from the age of 55.This is a good example of the general attitude in Norway, and why someone has to put their foot down and say stop before the whole country goes to waste, as if a socialistic government in the last election wasn't enough to disrupt the economy.
After posting the story on kfwebs.net I was asked if I were to travel today, a reasonable quesion. But no, I was not. I'm just upset about the poor judgement and the general attitude from employees in Norway. Given a couple of years there won't be any Norwegian cabin employee left, only Swedes, which in itself isn't a bad thing. I for one would salute such as change.
Norwegian employees price themself off the market, and feel free to do so, but that would require a change in the tax system. My taxes are used to pay taxes, which are used to cover the welfare. So in my opinion people have a responsibility to stay in their job or I should have a choice not to pay for them.
