For those to whom Danish might as well be a throat disease with loose grammatical rules, the gist of the article is as follows:
Primera air had a subsidiary in the Baltics, and had out flagged most of their fleet to the Latvian register. At the same time, crews at the Riga base were placed on self-employment based contracts via an agency, on roughly half the salary and none of the benefits enjoyed by their colleagues on Danish contracts. The flights operating out of CPH were crewed by staff based in Sweden, from where they were taxied/bussed to and from CPH to commence duties. The union argued they were therefore effectively working out of CPH, and should therefore be covered by the Danish CLA. Primera disagreed, and the union booked a date with them in the DK labour court, who would with 99,9% certainty have ruled in favour of the union - there is already plenty of precedence and an EU ruling to back it up.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility, that the prospect of losing that case and subsequently having to more than double the renumeration for a large number of crews, whilst at the same time utterly undermining the out flagging exercise, played a part in the decision to declare bankruptcy. Or, in other words, they were trying to operate on the basis of a dodgy and, ultimately, unsustainable businessplan.
Feel sorry for the crew, suppose the lives of other airlines desperate for crew just got a bit easier. At least for a while.
Last edited by SMT Member; 1st Oct 2018 at 19:05.