The Copenhagen Post | Nov 23-29

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A search for answers after Kødbyen killing

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Government drops plan to outlaw sex purchases

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23 - 29 November 2012 | Vol 15 Issue 47

Full on! Hold on! Monty’s here!

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Denmark’s only English-language newspaper | cphpost.dk COLOURBOX

NEWS

You want what’s under these mountains? Pay up, Greenland’s premier tells Denmark

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NEWS

Bikers get off easy Eastern High Court gives lighter sentences to 14 biker gang members as historic trial concludes

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Teenage wasteland As students party right through the night, drunkenness and absenteeism plague the nation’s upper secondary schools Drawing inspiration from Paris, Copenhagen looks to establish an international student city

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SPORT

A Copenhagen school teacher is pushing hard for the sport to be included in the national curriculum

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“Tremendous relief” after SAS staves off bankruptcy JUSTIN CREMER

Netball’s inside woman

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But hard feelings linger after intense negotiations result in employees making salary and work hour concessions

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FTER a weekend spent huddled up at Copenhagen Airport hammering out a deal to save the company’s future, SAS airline officials and employees’ unions reached an agreement on Monday that will stave off bankruptcy. The Danish cabin attendants’ union, CAU, was the last of a total of eight unions from Denmark, Sweden and Norway to come to an agreement with SAS’s management. In a deal accepted 14 hours after the original deadline for

employees to accept a savings plan described as ‘make or break’ for the company, CAU agreed to having their working week extended by 3.5 hours, their annual salaries cut by the equivalent of one month’s pay and working days that can be as long as 13 hours. For CAU members, the concessions were hard to make. “I have given my life’s blood,” Helge Thuesen, the head of CAU, told DR News. “I have made agreements I was very reluctant to make. We have many single mothers and it is going to be very hard in the future, and I feel terrible about it.” As part of the deal, SAS pilots in Denmark, Sweden and Norway agreed to a ten percent wage reduction and an eight percent increase in their working hours.

Throughout the process, some SAS employees voiced their displeasure with the leadership’s tactic of applying pressure on them to accept the savings plan via the media. And those hard feelings continued after the deal was sealed. Several sources close to the negotiations told Politiken newspaper that SAS’s leadership incessantly bombarded employees with messages meant to convey the gravity of the situation. One message even went so far as to warn employees to make sure they had money with them when they were out on flights so that they could get home if the company went bankrupt. According to psychologist Janne Hertz, this put employees in “a complex psychological situation” that could come back to haunt SAS.

“It’s the classic recipe for stress, which can end up costing the company in terms of sick days and other consequences like fatigue and a lack of energy among employees,” Hertz told Politiken. While the conditions of the deal and the negotiations themselves were hard for employees, the alternative would have seen SAS enter into bankruptcy proceedings. Therefore, many Danish leaders expressed their relief that the last-minute deal was brokered. Copenhagen’s mayor, Frank Jensen (Socialdemokraterne), commended both sides for coming together to save SAS. “It is a tremendous relief because there would have been serious consequences for Copenhagen, the Øresund

SAS continues on page 15

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The Copenhagen Post | Nov 23-29 by The Copenhagen Post - Issuu