Brussels – The European Union needs to protect aviation workers from exploitation, the European Commission said on Friday.
The bloc’s executive released a report outlining proposals to strengthen labour conditions for pilots and cabin crew.
It included tighter regulation of non-contractual labour and undeclared work, which typically do not grant benefits or protections.
Among the proposals was convening a group of labour and aviation experts that will advise the commission and member states on how to better implement labour laws.
The report comes at a time of rising labour unrest in the industry, most notably seen in a series of strikes by Ryanair pilots and cabin crew since mid-2018.
“Increased competition, automation and digitalisation have also had an impact on the workforce, notably through the development of atypical forms of employment,’’ the commission said in a press release.
“This has led to legal uncertainty and the risk of disrupting the level playing field among airlines,’’ it added.
Two million workers in the EU are directly employed in the aviation industry, while it supports 9.4 million jobs in total and contributes 125.4 billion dollars to the bloc’s economy, the commission release noted.
Meanwhile, the number of daily flights has jumped from under 10,000 in 1992 to around 25,000 in 2017.
The German pilots association Vereinigung Cockpit welcomed the commission announcement as a “long-awaited wake-up call” .(dpa/NAN)