El Al Optimistic About 1980

El Al began the new year yesterday confident it will be able to cut operational losses and with an agreement from all of its employees not to call a strike for the next five years.

This became possible when El Al chairman Avraham Shavit announced to the airline’s board of directors late last night that the last employees’ group, the air hostesses and pursers, had agreed to the salary cuts and other demands of the company. The last agreement is similar to that reached with the pilots and other cabin crew to end the practice of paying part of the salary in foreign currency.

The pilots agreed to the pay cuts, which amounted to 20-40 percent, after the Cabinet threatened to close down the airline if agreements were not reached by Dec. 31. Ground crews agreed to waive wage demands late last Saturday night.

Shavit told the board of directors that 1980 will see a new El Al, one in which all its employees have pledged their desire to see El Al once again among the front line of international airlines.

He said El Al employees have demonstrated a readiness to give up demands, delay requests for wage increases and even do more than the agreements called for in the recently signed agreements. Shavit said travel agents throughout the world could now book passengers on El Al assured they will be receive good service and that operations will not be interrupted by strikes.

Shavit earlier this week predicted El Al would be in the black by 1981 because of the new agreements. The airline lost $60 million in 1979 and is expected to lose almost double that amount this year.