(Update: details from Pk throughout)

FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The wage dispute between Lufthansa ground staff has been settled. Following successful mediation, Lufthansa and the trade union Verdi have agreed on the main features of a collective agreement for the approximately 25,000 employees, as they announced in Frankfurt on Wednesday evening. This means that strikes by this group of employees over the Easter vacations have been averted. In a ballot, more than 90 percent of employees had already voted in favor of indefinite strikes.

"We are very satisfied with the result of the arbitration," said Verdi negotiator Marvin Reschinsky. He firmly expects both the bargaining committee and the employees to agree. Michael Niggemann, Lufthansa's Chief Human Resources Officer, said that the company was also very satisfied. "But we have major investments ahead of us". The agreed salary increases will entail additional costs.

Details will not be available until Thursday, after the relevant committees of the union and the company have been informed. However, the term of the new collective agreement is already fixed at two years.

Both sides had been negotiating behind closed doors since Monday under the moderation of the mediators - Thuringia's Minister President Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) and the former head of the Federal Employment Agency, Frank-Jürgen Weise. The aim was to avoid indefinite strikes over the Easter vacations. Verdi had threatened ground staff with an indefinite strike if the arbitration failed.

The arbitration recommendation was agreed unanimously, said Ramelow. Weise described the role of the arbitrators as moderating, even if the talks that began on Monday had been on the verge of breaking off. Conflicts had been marked with lightning bolts on a diagram and these had been "unblitzed" in the course of the talks.

Weise pointed out the fierce competition to which Lufthansa was exposed internationally. In Turkey, for example, air traffic is disproportionately subsidized.

"The mediators have managed to get both sides to move once again, to listen carefully to each other once more," said Reschinsky.

The union had demanded 12.5 percent more pay for the approximately 25,000 Lufthansa ground staff for a one-year term, while the company had offered 10 percent for a 28-month term. Verdi has already organized five rounds of warning strikes among ground staff, as a result of which hundreds of flights were cancelled.

However, there are several other wage disputes in the aviation industry. For example, arbitration was recently agreed in the wage dispute for around 25,000 employees of private aviation security service providers at German airports. It is to begin on Friday, April 5, under the leadership of former Bremen State Councillor for Finance Hans-Henning Lühr (SPD). Lufthansa flight attendants have also already gone on strike for higher wages, but no solution has yet been found. In addition, pilots and cabin crew at Lufthansa subsidiary Discover are demanding a first pay scale for the still young airline./ceb/als/DP/he