Lufthansa reaches agreement with ground staff on higher wages

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• Lufthansa has reached an agreement with the trade union Verdi on higher wages for around 20,000 ground staff.
• The agreement prevents further strikes on the ground for the time being and provides planning security until 2028.
• Conflicts with pilots and flight attendants remain, however, and could once again lead to cancellations.

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Strikes by another professional group at Lufthansa have been averted. The company and the trade union Verdi agreed on a new wage settlement for the approximately 20,000 ground staff.

According to the agreement, employees will receive salary increases totaling around 4.6 percent in two stages, as announced by both sides. Employees at Lufthansa Technik and Lufthansa Cargo will receive 2.2 percent more pay retroactively to January 1, followed by a further increase of 2.4 percent from March 1, 2027.

For ground staff at Lufthansa AG, the first stage will take effect one year later due to the tense economic situation. The collective agreement will run for 26 months until the end of February 2028.

Michael Niggemann, Head of Human Resources and Legal Affairs at Lufthansa, said that the long term guarantees reliability. The agreement sends a clear signal in times of geopolitical crises.

Verdi expressed a similar view. "This wage agreement creates security in uncertain times," said chief negotiator Marvin Reschinsky. "In future, employees will have an average of 220 euros more in their pockets each month."

Strikes averted on the ground - but not in the air

Verdi had entered the negotiations with a demand for 6.0 percent more money over a period of twelve months. At the very least, there should be an increase of 250 euros per month.

The professional groups represented by Verdi, for example in technology, at check-in or in customer service, are able to paralyze flight operations in the event of a dispute, just like the flying personnel. Verdi had already surveyed the willingness to strike and found a high level of approval. In 2024, only arbitration brought a solution.

However, the agreement for ground staff does not mean that strikes within the Lufthansa Group are off the table. The pilots and flight attendants of the core Lufthansa brand and other flight operations have spoken out in favor of industrial action in ballots.

After two waves of strikes, there were initially no more concrete threats of strike action. Just a few weeks ago, hundreds of flights were canceled due to a strike by pilots. Recently, Lufthansa's offer of talks with the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots' union (VC) brought some movement into the deadlocked wage dispute.