Please find below an update regarding:
- SwissLife
- TZC Court Case
- V-Days
SwissLife
We would like to give you a summary concerning the Amendments to the Regulations of the Supplementary Pension & Death & Disability Insurance Scheme valid since 01/01/2018.
Please click here to download the document that was signed in March 2019. Below you will find the respective endorsements.
In total three Endorsements have been signed by CV management after consulting the Employees Delegation and the Pilot Representatives in 2019. These are:
- Endorsement
The Affiliate acquires his/her rights to the Supplementary Pension Benefits after a Vesting period of 3 years, instead of 4,5 years (Article 21)[LINK]. - Endorsement
Due to a change in the Luxembourgish Law, the Paragraphs 23.2. and 23.3. had to be adjusted to reflect the new law related to the pay-out options [LINK].Since August 2018 it is only possible to have the value at leaving date of his/her Acquired Rights paid out immediately
- if the Affiliate is changing activity and is no longer affiliated to the Luxembourg health insurance, or
- if the accumulated savings do not exceed 3 times the minimum monthly social salary for an unskilled worker aged at least 18.
- Endorsement
The method of calculating the yearly employer’s contributions has changed. From 01 of January 2020 onwards not only the year of birth but also the month of birth will be taken into account for the calculation of the Annual Net Investment Contributions under Article 20.2.1. [LINK]This reflects the change of the formula that was suggested by the IGSS (Inspection Générale de la Sécurité Sociale) in a letter received on 25 October 2016, after the ALPL Divisional Board has asked for clarification in regard to a possible discrimination of affiliates based on their age at the renewal date. Unfortunately, it was not possible to back-date this amendment, which means that only future calculations will be affected by the new formula.
In other words, this means that by law it is not possible anymore to have the money paid out above age 60 as long as someone still is employed with Cargolux or any other company affiliated to the Luxembourg health insurance.
TZC Court Case
Since the implementation of the EASA FTLs the ALPL is active in contesting the interpretation of CS.FTL.1.235 (b) (3) (i), an article that determines the minimum number of local nights required for time zone compensation after completion of a rotation.
Although we were able to clarify the correct calculation of the maximum time difference in the recent negotiations for the new CWA, the main issue, calculating the “time elapsed” for determining the minimum local nights of rest at home base, remained unsolved. Applying the, in our opinion, incorrect interpretation of “…for the first FDP in a Rotation involving at least 4-hour time difference…” occasionally leads to absurd results, awarding different numbers of local nights of rest to pilots who crossed the same time zones during a rotation.
Since the DAC-L does not share our point of view and therefore did not intervene, we finally decided to take the issue to court. FTLs are a European legislation, therefore our aim was to involve the European Court which has the final authority in interpreting any European legislation. To initiate the proceedings, we had to start at a national level by contesting the DAC-L interpretation of this rule at the administrative court of Luxembourg. Ultimately, our goal was to enforce a preliminary decision by the European Court, which would have been binding for all EU member states.
Unfortunately, the lawsuit, involving ECA, EASA and various legal specialists, was not successful. In our opinion the court fundamentally misunderstood the legal issue behind the problem and violated European law, by not involving the European Court to obtain a preliminary decision.
Since all legal means on a national level have been exhausted, the only possibility to reverse this decision would be the initiation of breach-of-contract proceedings against Luxembourg, which only can be done by the European Commission.
We are currently still analyzing the situation with our lawyers in order to prepare further steps involving ECA, EASA and the European Commission.
V-Days
In a meeting with the Chief Pilot on 06 February 2020 we discussed the reviewed V-Day allocation. It is worth mentioning that the data that was provided by the Crew Planning Department and published in the February edition of the Chief Pilots Office Newsletter in general matches with the data that we collected and that the individual success rate went up. However, these rates are still far from the approval rates of previous years.
We again highlighted the original purpose of the V-Days, namely, to assist colleagues with relative low seniority to have the off days connected to a short vacation period to give them an opportunity to plan vacation already well ahead of the monthly roster publication, which was acknowledged by the CPO.
It therefore was decided to start exploring different ways to achieve higher approval rates in the future and to have the current bidding and allocation process reviewed. This will be done in close collaboration with the ALPL Vacation Committee.
