Eva Airways Fails to Sign Agreement With Union, Strike Continues

(Bloomberg) -- Taiwan's Eva Airways Corp. failed to come to terms with representatives of striking flight attendants on Saturday night, and will renegotiate with workers on Tuesday, a union said.

The strike will continue until a collective agreement is signed, the union said in a statement posted on its Facebook page at midnight. Among the issues for negotiation that broke down was the carrier's refusal to withdraw punitive measures against flight attendants, according to a statement issued by the company.

Earlier Saturday, a majority of the employees voted to accept an offer by the carrier on Friday, and were willing to end the 10-day strike.

The action started on June 20 and involves more than 2,300 workers. The cancellation of 392 flights between June 20 and 28 caused revenue losses of NT$1.75 billion ($56 million), the company said late Friday in a statement to the Taiwan stock exchange.

Eva Airways estimates the strike will cause the cancellation of almost 2000 flights by July 12, and impact hundreds of thousands of passengers.

The strike is the second impacting an airline in Taiwan this year. Staff of China Airlines Ltd., Taiwan's largest carrier, stopped work for seven days in February. Pilots reached a deal with China Airlines on compensation that was estimated to add about NT$114 million to the company's annual costs.

To contact the reporter on this story: Miaojung Lin in Taipei at mlin179@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, John McCluskey, James Ludden

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