Nationwide Airlines has accused trade union Solidarity of deliberately misleading workers around a pay dispute at the carrier.
Financial director Peter Griffiths said the airline believed that Solidarity’s intention to call a strike at Nationwide had been taken ”without proper consideration”, was ”irresponsible and mischievous”, and was not in the best interest of their members or the other 700 Nationwide employees.
”Their statement is misleading in the extreme and contains several factual errors,” said Griffiths.
He said Solidarity members were demanding an eight percent increase, comprising a five percent salary demand and a three percent pensionable increase.
”Nationwide believes that its current offer more than covers these demands”.
According to Griffiths, Nationwide has a policy of automatically allowing for inflation by increasing cabin crew salaries annually by five percent, on the anniversary of their joining the company.
”In addition to this, we have also offered a further four percent increase to all cabin crew and ground staff, including a compounded increase on the five percent already implemented.”
Nationwide also recently implemented a three percent night shift allowance, so the total increase cabin crew would be receiving this year was 12,2%.
According to Griffiths, it now appears that Solidarity is not taking into account the eight percent increase already implemented this year in making their demand for a further eight percent, making the total demand effectively over 16% — an amount far in excess of the inflation rate and well outside the parameters targeted by the government in order to stem inflation.
Solidarity has 250 members in Nationwide Airlines out of a total of over 1 000 employees.
”Nationwide management continues to be committed to a fair and equitable remuneration policy, and will do everything in its power to ensure that passengers are not unduly inconvenienced should this strike go ahead,” Griffiths said.
Solidarity announced on Tuesday that their members at the airline would strike from 5pm on Friday.
If the strike went ahead, it would have some effect on domestic flights, although all international and regional flights were expected to operate normally, the company said.
Where domestic flights were affected, Nationwide would endeavour to re-accommodate passengers on other Nationwide flights or with the other domestic airlines. – Sapa