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Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Civil aviation - Sectoral social dialogue

Social dialogue in the Civil Aviation sector covers activities related to NACE (Rev.2) codes 51.10, 51.21 and 52.23, which include: 

  • airline companies,
  • ground service providers,
  • air traffic management.

The sectoral social dialogue committee has been created in 2000, replacing the Joint Committee on Civil Aviation previously functioning since 1990. In 2019, EU civil aviation sector employed almost 600,000 persons by about 9,000 companies

Almost half of them were aircrew, around 37% were employed in aviation ground service activities and 10% were employed in air traffic management (Eurofound Representativeness studies, 2022). 

The sector faces the following main challenge:

  • structural changes - the low-cost model & atypical forms of employment
  • staff shortages and slow recovery since the COVID-19 pandemic
  • employee representation, notably among low-cost carriers (LLCs).

Workers' organisations

Employers' organisations

Key areas

The current work programme focuses on:

  • workers’ shortages and attractiveness of the sector
  • occupational Health & Safety (OHS) and mental health
  • new forms of employment, subcontracting and temporary agency workers
  • diversity, Equality & Inclusion (DEI)
  • unruly passengers
  • setting a level playing field.

Activities and meetings

Check the library entries for this sectoral social dialogue committee.

Achievements/Joint texts

Check the social dialogue texts database