Sickness absence among SAS pilots stops flights

Plans by the Scandinavian airline group SAS to transfer bargaining responsibility for collective agreements covering pilots to its national subsidiaries were the apparent cause of five days of chaos in Norwegian aviation in January 2006. A large number of departures were cancelled when pilots reported sick.

The Norwegian airline SAS-Braathens was forced to cancel a large number of flights over 23-27 January 2006, due to an unprecedented outbreak of sickness absence among the company’s pilots. SAS-Braathens is the Norwegian part of the SAS Group, and is organised as a fully-owned subsidiary. The outbreak of sickness absence came at the same time as Danish pilots in SAS took industrial action, which was later deemed illegal by the Swedish Labour Court (SE0602101N and DK0602101N).

The mass sickness absence came against the backdrop of Norwegian pilots’ discontent with the planned transfer of employer's bargaining responsibility for SAS pilots’ collective agreements from the central group level to each of the three national subsidiaries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Employer responsibility for many Norwegian pilots is already transferred to the Norwegian company SAS-Braathens ASA. However, the SAS group (SAS AB) is still party to negotiations for the majority of the pilots in SAS-Braathens.

The substantial increase in sickness absence among the Norwegian pilots led to the cancellation of a large number of departures in the period 23-27 January. At the most 20% of the relevant pilots reported ill, and more than 100 departures were cancelled each day. It was generally assumed that the absence rate was grounded in organised actions taken by the pilots, even though the Norwegian SAS pilots and their trade union maintained that the opposite was the case. The Norwegian media on the other hand reported SMS-messages being sent to pilots calling on them to take sick leave. Also the management of SAS-Braathens saw the increase in the sickness absence rate as a response to the proposed transfer of bargaining responsibility of collective agreements although they were careful in their comments. Following a couple of days of absence the employer requested the pilots to come forward with medical certificates, also for the period during which they normally are only required to show self certificates. The trade union for the relevant pilots - SAS Pilots Association Norway (Norske SAS-flygeres Forening) - went public, calling on members to go back to work if they felt well enough to do so. After five days of cancellations, the situation went back to normal. According to SAS-Braathens, the company is at present considering whether or not to bring the events before the Labour Court.

There is no tradition in Norwegian working life of taking industrial action during the operation of a collective agreement, ie the period of the peace obligation. An important reason for this is that the Norwegian Labour Court may impose substantial tort liability on the trade unions in relation to actions deemed illegal, reflecting the economic loss of the employer. Demonstration of discontent with the employer thus usually takes form of partial work stoppage or 'disguised actions' that are difficult to link directly to the trade unions. Different national traditions in this regard may thus explain differences in the way Norwegian and Danish pilots expressed their discontent with the SAS Group's decision to transfer bargaining responsibility.

The events have also brought attention to the fact that there is still substantial disagreement between different groups of employees within SAS-Braathens itself. The Norwegian airline Braathens was taken over by SAS in 2001 (NO0106134N; NO0111125N; NO0206106F; NO0311101N, NO0505105S) and the employees of the two companies are still organised in separate unions, with differing wages and working conditions. The pilots from the old Braathens have not participated in what the media has labelled industrial action, and have also voiced criticism against their new SAS-Braathens colleagues. These pilots already have SAS Braathens as their main bargaining counterpart, and are subject to different wage and working conditions than the original SAS pilots. They have also considered leaving the independent Norwegian Airline Pilots Association (Norsk Flygerforening), in favour of Parat, which is a union organising other groups of aviation employees. Parat is affiliated to the Confederation of Vocational Unions (Yrkesorganisasjonenes Sentralforbund, YS).

This information is made available through the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO), as a service to users of the EIROnline database. EIRO is a project of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. However, this information has been neither edited nor approved by the Foundation, which means that it is not responsible for its content and accuracy. This is the responsibility of the EIRO national centre that originated/provided the information. For details see the "About this record" information in this record.