AKT on Saturday accused Finnair of poor management, human resources policy and the use of redundancies to threaten employees in connection with its plan to subcontract in-flight services on its flights to and from Thailand and the United States.
Finnair is openly extorting its own employees to be able to cut wages, said Ismo Kokko, chairperson of AKT.
The airline said yesterday that it will give passengers affected by the cancellations re-routing options to their final destination, and will issue notifications of the cancellations to the contact details provided with the booking. Passengers can check the status of their flight on the airline's website.
"We are deeply sorry for the concern and inconvenience this strike is causing our customers, and we will do our best to reroute the customers as soon as possible," said Jaakko Schmidt, chief operating officer at Finnair.
It is sad that the labour union has chosen the path of an illegal strike instead of negotiations. We discussed savings possibilities with the unions throughout the autumn, but unfortunately we have not been able to achieve a result with the cabin crew. He said that we still hope to find solutions together.
Finnair believes traffic will return to normal during the course of the afternoon. Individual flights may be affected later because of the non-operation of return flights for cancelled long-haul flights.