The actual reality is a circumvention and misrepresentation scheme.
The Norwegian Airline Group recruits, interviews, hires, determines the base, roster, days off, vacation, promotion opportunities, layoffs and may also terminate pilots and cabin crew. By EU law definition, Norwegian is the employer.
Pilots and cabin crew working for Norwegian in the UK are not working under the UK Employment Act 2008. As such, they have no claim whatsoever against Norwegian in any employment dispute. Nor do they have the right to union representation or collective agreement with Norwegian.
Pilots and cabin crew in the UK employed by an agency, are working under the Agency Workers Regulations 2010. Although Norwegian may have misrepresented itself as the "employer" on crew airport ID badges and US visa applications.
Since the March 31, 2008 effective date of the EU US Open-Skies Agreement, 57 EU carriers have applied and been granted US Permits. The average time between application and granting the requests was
55 days. After 15 months, the longest time of any application, the DOT is no closer to granting NAI its permit. Serious concerns remain regarding Norwegian's circumvention of employment rights and principles.
Several weeks ago Kjos boasted in the Norway press that he did not need the US Permit - link:
- Vi kan fly til krampa tar oss med de tillatelsene vi har - DN.no
* copy and paste to Google Translate
More recently, Kjos has written a begging letter to DOT Secretary Foxx pleading for the US Permit - link:
Kjos frir til Obama for å få trafikkrettigheter i USA - Aftenposten
In reply to the Kjos letter the Secretary of the European Transport Workers Union, Francos Ballastero, stated:
"
In an attempt to pursue the policy stated in the employment agreement, the Spain based pilots have organized themselves under SEPLA, the Spanish pilots union, and have made repeated attempts to engage Norwegian or representatives of Norwegian, for the purposes of constructive talks. For the past six months these repeated attempts have been completely ignored by Norwegian. As a reply to these efforts made by the pilot representatives, Norwegian has stated it does not have any pilots in Spain, but an agency called OSM does"
Article 17 of the current US-EU Air Transport Agreement, Open-Skies, states: "
The opportunites created by the Agreemnt are not intended to undermine the labor standards or the labor related rights and principles contained in the Parties respective laws"
Norwegian categorically does not meet the prerequisite requirement of Article 17. A US Permit cannot be granted.