EurECCA urges the EU Commission for more concrete action
Press Release – Brussels, 1 March 2019 – EurECCA, the association representing European cabin crew, while it welcomes the EU Commission’s new report unveiled today for the ‘Social Agenda’ for air transport, believes it falls short in several areas that need to be addressed in order to eliminate social abuse and anti-competitive practices in aviation and to achieve ‘socially responsible air transport’ in Europe.
Christoph Drescher, President of EurECCA says, “We fear that the ‘Social Agenda’ report does not go far enough in terms of tackling the real problems of atypical employment. Our colleagues need to see more and concrete actions than those outlined in the report.”
The ‘Social Agenda’ report highlights several areas of major concern that need to be addressed. These include: airlines taking advantage of loopholes and lack of enforcement of EU and national social legislation; zero-hours contracts of cabin crew (enforced by airlines as a way of avoiding regular employment contracts); making almost permanent use of crewing agencies; and preventing crew’s access to the national labour law of their home base.
To tackle these ongoing and critical problems the report highlights several actions it plans to undertake including the set-up of a new expert group of labour inspectorate and civil aviation authorities from EU Member States.
This report is long overdue and cabin crew within the EU have long been subjected to social abuse, social dumping and lack of legal certainty. Now that these problems have been recognised by the commission, we are expecting the new expert group to work quickly to ensure that current rules will be respected and that regulations will be changed where they simply aren’t working,’ says Xavier Gautier, Secretary General of EurECCA.
EurECCA represents, protects and develops the rights and needs of cabin crew all over Europe
