Swiss International Air Lines (Zurich) has concluded a new collective labor agreement with the IPG union which represents the pilots of its Swiss European Air Lines (Zurich).

The company issued this statement:

SWISS has concluded a new collective labor agreement with the IPG, the staff association of its Swiss European Air Lines pilots. The new CLA14+ will keep the company competitive, give greater flexibility to its flight operations and enable its new Bombardier CS100 and Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft fleets to be brought into service with the participation of both its present pilot corps.

The new accord was formally signed by SWISS and the IPG on Wednesday May 28. The CLA14+ collective labor agreement, which will be valid from July 2014 to April 2019, will enable SWISS to make major structural change. The new accord, which will be available to all SWISS pilots, will cover and regulate the introduction of the company’s two new aircraft types, the Bombardier CS100 and the Boeing 777-300 ER, in a way which safeguards its competitive credentials while also ensuring fair participation for both of its cockpit corps. The new agreement offers the company’s present Avro RJ100 pilots new long-haul career opportunities, and simultaneously allows the company’s Airbus pilots to transfer to it with due regard to their current rank and qualifications.

The key features of the new CLA14+ in brief:

•An innovative new salary and workhours model will provide greater flexibility for SWISS’s flight operations, while also offering its pilots more scope in their roster planning. At the same time, the modernized salary system, while being more closely geared to functional criteria, still pays due and full regard to further considerations such as experience and loyalty to the company.

•Any transfers to the new CLA14+ from the Airbus pilot corps will be effected with full recognition of seniority and experience. Up to two-thirds of the long-haul places under the new CLA have been forseen for such transfers.

•This will both ensure that free positions can be occupied according to needs and allow SWISS to establish its planned new cockpit crew base in Geneva. The further option of recruiting pilots for such positions from outside SWISS would only be resorted to if there were no candidates for the positions concerned from either SWISS pilot corps.

“Our new CLA14+ will lay the foundations for making our operations more flexible and more cost-effective and thus more competitive, without having to outsource or reduce corps numbers,” says SWISS Chief Operating Officer Rainer Hiltebrand. “And it will ensure that we can employ all our pilots under favourable terms and conditions which we can continue to offer in the longer term.”

The new CLA14+ will now be subject to a phase of consultation among the Swiss European pilot corps, after which it will be put to referendum in a process that will begin in mid-June.

SWISS’s Airbus pilots will remain subject to their own CLA until the end of 2016 as desired. SWISS remains in discussions with Aeropers, the staff association of its Airbus cockpit corps.

Copyright Photo: Rolf Wallner/AirlinersGallery.com. The new agreement offers the company’s present Avro RJ100 pilots new long-haul career opportunities. Swiss European’s BAe RJ100 HB-IYS (msn E3381) in the special “Shopping Paradise Zurich Airport” taxies at the Zurich hub.

Swiss International: 

Swiss European: