Air France: pilots or ground personnel, who was the jokester behind the Transform farce?

The war has been declared between Air France’s ground personnel and air crew.

The ground personnel blames the air crew of not having met their productivity objectives laid out in the Transform 2015 plan.

The tensions were reignited a few days ago with the publications of the details of the new voluntary redundancy plan that will target 300 jobs in air crew and 496 jobs of ground personnel, of which 319 will be in the province bases.

This is will be the fourth voluntary redundancy plan since 2010 for this category of employees.

The first had affect 1,834 people.

The second (2012-2013) had the objective of letting go of 2,797 people and 2,533 have left.

A new one in 2013, with 1,660 departures.

Leading to a total, since 2010, of close to 6,027 ground personnel that have left the company.

As for air crew employees, the departures only started in 2012-2013.

At that time, 200 pilots and 400 air crew members leave the company. A new wave in 2013, with the departure of 426 air crew members and 100 pilots.

Leading to a total of 826 people in air crew and 400 pilots.

Some Air France employees believe that the pilots have not met their end of the contract by reaching less than 20% of the productivity gains.

According to a study from the SECAFI office, the measures taken have only led to a gain of 119.8 million euros when the initial goal was of 203 million euros.

However, the ground personnel has been more efficient, with a gain estimated at 23% and up to 25% for commercial service to passengers which generated 169 million euros in savings instead of the expected 135 million.

An accusation that the pilots strongly discredit.

“We’ve gone much beyond the 20% in productivity. But these efforts were not stated in the Transform plan.

They were not taken into account in this study” affirms Véronique Damon, the General Secretary of SNPL France.

For example, she cites a change in the working methods, especially with a more complex documentation in English that leads to much more working time.

She also insures that the qualification times are shorter going from 3 months to 6 weeks.

She also supports that some measures were not applied entirely, like the more efficient use of pilots in the province bases.

“We’re attempting to create a divide whereas pilots went even further than the measures laid out in Transform.

In fact, we were the first to begin negotiations to launch the plan” she insists.

She certifies that this new voluntary redundancy plan in January could not affect pilots, of which the overstaffing has been resorbed.

“Last February, some medium-haul pilots even had to cancel their vacations to conduct flights. And next summer, it seems that the long-haul number of 777 has been more justly calculated.”

Let’s also specify that close to 70 of them will be amongst Transavia’s numbers, meaning 20 more than last year.

And according to Véronique Damon, it is illegal to launch a voluntary redundancy plan on one side, while another branch of the company is simultaneously hiring.

Air France’s management doesn’t want to aggravate the situation, especially since the discussions between unions and employees are continuing.

However, some that are close to the case think that pilots will still have efforts to make to establish the expected measures explained in the Transform plan.

We just need to see under what conditions will they accept, without leading to a new conflict.