Cabin-crew strikers to keep up airport picket

The union says Zeal staff are paid up to $30,000 less a year than Air NZ colleagues. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Striking Air New Zealand cabin crew will picket the airport again this morning as the rift over pay deepens.

Today is the second of a four-day strike by 240 crew employed by Air NZ subsidiary Zeal.

The flight attendants' union says Zeal staff are paid up to $30,000 a year less than their Air NZ colleagues, a figure the airline has rejected.

Flights have not been affected by the strike, says Air New Zealand, but relations between the EPMU and the airline have deteriorated.

About 60 workers picketed the airline's Auckland head office yesterday.

An EPMU spokesman said staff would picket outside Auckland International Airport today at 7am, and again at lunchtime on Sunday.

Air New Zealand said Tasman and Pacific Islands schedules operated as normal yesterday. The airline has trained extra cabin crew and asked other staff to help cover flights during the strike.

The company says the EPMU has walked away from pay offers of several thousand dollars for members including a base pay increase of nearly 4 per cent and allowance increases of almost 8 per cent.

However, EPMU national secretary Andrew Little said several claims by the airline were "patently false".

That included claims that Zeal crew received pay rates of more than $40,000, that the union had refused to negotiate and that the workers were claiming parity with international crew.

"The pay rates the company are claiming are absurd and if they were really guaranteeing our members the rates they claim then this industrial action wouldn't be happening," Mr Little said.

Air New Zealand said last night that the offer that was on the table would mean a new entrant Zeal flight attendant would receive more than $43,000 for an average 30-hour week.

The union won support from the Maritime Union yesterday.

General secretary Trevor Hanson said waterfront workers and seafarers supported the protests by Zeal workers, but he would not say if his union planned to take the matter further.

He said the dispute was "textbook anti-worker, anti-union stuff".