No talks scheduled as Icelandair engineers’ strike looms

No meeting has been scheduled in the collective bargaining dispute between aircraft engineers and Icelandair, state mediator Ástráður Haraldsson told mbl.is. Unless the situation changes, the strike will begin on September 23, one week from now.

Haraldsson said the dispute concerns pay and the size of the wage increases the engineers should receive. There are currently no plans for further talks.

“If neither side is prepared to move at all, there is no point in me sitting down with them,” Haraldsson said. He has tried to put forward possible solutions in cooperation with the parties, but no proposal has emerged.

Asked whether he might present a mediation proposal, Haraldsson said he would do so if he believed the conditions were right for making progress, whether through an internal proposal, a formal mediation proposal or another type of proposal. The dispute had not yet reached that point, he said.

Haraldsson said the engineers had been offered wage increases comparable to those received by other groups in the general labour market. However, the engineers believe they are owed an adjustment because of circumstances relating to earlier agreements, and the sides have not reached an agreement on that issue.

The engineers are seeking a correction to their pay, which they say has fallen behind that of the groups they use as a comparison. Óskar Einarsson, chairman of the Icelandic Aircraft Engineers Association, told Morgunblaðið that he would not identify the groups.

“I am not referring to any particular profession. This is based on data we have. These are groups whose wages were 40,000 Icelandic krónur higher than ours in 2019,” he said.

Einarsson said the engineers had not published a specific wage demand and that he would not disclose one for now. He said they had instead pointed to the wage gap that had developed as comparison groups’ pay had risen while the engineers had remained on a fixed collective agreement.

He said Icelandair had offered the engineers a 3.5 per cent wage increase but had not been willing to discuss a higher increase.