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Lufthansa pilots suspend strike
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Thousands of pilots have gone back to work at German airliner Lufthansa, after agreeing to suspend their strike. According to a German labor court, negotiations between the union and air carrier will restart immediately.
The pilot's union and Lufthansa agreed that the walkout would be halted in the next two weeks under the labor court's mediation.
Germany's Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said the decision was a move in the right direction.
Peter Ramsaver, German Transport Minister, said, "I'm very happy now that new negotiations will start. I pledge to both parties that the upcoming 14 days of negotiations will be used intensively to get a final sustainable and good agreement."
The union has agreed to give up one of their conditions that German pilots will get one-million-euros in compensation if the flights of Lufthansa Italia, an affiliated airline, are piloted by Italians.
The condition was brought up by the union in an effort to prevent the jobs of German pilots from being out-sourced to neighboring countries with cheaper conditions.
Lufthansa said that they can not tolerate conditions interfering with the operation of the company, which was the main cause for the failure of previous talks.
The disputes of further negotiations will focus on the payment and job security of some 45 hundred German pilots, which will unlikely get compromised easily.
Lufthansa planned to cut 1 billion euros of costs before 2011 as demand dropped significantly in the aviation industry. Laying off workers or cutting wages were expected to be major options to achieve these goals.
So far, Lufthansa is still running its irregular flight schedule but promised to increase flights gradually. The operation is expected to back to normal on Friday.
