Fears social dumping in the aviation industry

airline NorwegianThe airline Norwegian. Photo: Norway Today Media

The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) fears social dumping in the aviation industry

The Trade Unions (LO) fear that social dumping in aviation will be a consequence of Norwegian Airlines becoming recognized as permitted to fly inside the USA.

 

‘This is a development that threatens both Norwegian and European jobs. We are afraid that Norwegian will use employees who have less favorable terms of employment than those adopted by the industry as a whole’, said the head of LO Aviation, Peggy Hesse Følsvik, to Klassekampen newspaper.

Recently, Norwegian Airlines received permanent permission to fly to the United States of America. via its Irish subsidiary Norwegian Air International. Now the Trade Unions are worried about what will happen as a consequence of this.

On some international routes, Norwegian uses Asian labour. The company has 200 cabin crew based in Bangkok, and Følsvik thinks that the company will extend this to the new transatlantic lines too.

‘Although the staff in Bangkok has the best purchasing power of all Norwegians’ crew’, said Følsvik, ‘it is not okay that Asian labour is used to outperform European and American labour’.

‘It’s a classic argument for practicing social dumping, but it’s not a valid argument’, she said.

Norwegian refutes the LO claims, and say they are going to create thousands of new jobs for pilots and cabin crew in both Europe and the United States, and that they already have several hundred European and American employees in long-distance traffic today.

‘The claim that we might import cheap Asian labor is completely beyond comprehension’, says the communication manager in Norwegian Air Shuttle, Lasse Sandakerveien-Nielsen.

 

©  NTB Scanpix / Norway Today