No Agreement With Scandinavian Unions After Two-Week Pilots’ Strike

Copenhagen — Swedish airline SAS and the Scandinavian pilots' union have failed to settle a wage dispute after two weeks of strikes.

SAS said late Monday no agreement had been signed, countering speculation in recent media reports. The arbitration process has moved in the right direction and will continue, the airline said.

Several Scandinavian news outlets had earlier unanimously reported an agreement in tough arbitration talks in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

The newspaper Dagens Industri had cited information from SAS supervisory board chairman Carsten Dilling, which a company spokeswoman later contradicted.

Around 900 SAS pilots from Denmark, Sweden and Norway went on strike after collective agreement negotiations broke down in early July. The move has had a severe impact on financially strapped SAS, the airline said last week.

It caused thousands of flight cancellations and cost the airline around 100-130 million Swedish kronas per day ($9.6 million-$12.5 million), the airline said.

A new round of talks began on Wednesday with tough negotiations over the weekend. Such long strikes are unusual in Scandinavia.

The unions accuse SAS of using the coronavirus pandemic to fire hundreds of pilots - they say the airline laid them off with an agreement to rehire them and then failed to do so.

Instead, the airline is accused of relying on cheaper pilots from its SAS Link and SAS Connect subsidiaries, which the unions say act as the airline's staffing agency.

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