Australian skydivers in three states have gone on strike while pay negotiations drag on.

Skydiving instructors employed by tourism giant Experience Co were due to walk off the job on Friday at eight sites in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria after refusing multiple pay offers.

The company said its offers would make their employees some of the highest-paid in the industry but their union said the proposals would turn skydivers into gig workers.

“Tandem skydiving instructors literally take people’s lives in their hands every time they go to work,” Australian Workers’ Union national organiser Jonathan Cook said.

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He pointed out skydiving was often bought as a Christmas gift.

“Would you want your mum strapped to an underpaid instructor?”

The union said most of the company’s skydivers had seen little to no base wage increases in decades and the strike action follows 10 months of stalled negotiations for a first-ever enterprise agreement.

The cuts undermine the safety of every customer who straps into a tandem harness, the union said, claiming the company was trying to turn employees into “gig workers”.

The union said it was the first time skydiving instructors had taken strike action in Australia.

The disruption comes at one of the busiest times of the skydiving year, with Experience Co’s chief executive blaming “militant union bosses” for grounding dozens of flights.

“We call upon the union to reconsider its unreasonable and irresponsible industrial action,” John O’Sullivan said. “We are at a loss to understand this action given the strength of our offers.”

The company has been in negotiations since February with its 129 skydivers as they try to agree to terms on their first enterprise agreement.

Skydivers were brought in-house in 2022 and paid bonuses based on productivity, which the union said Experience Co wants to remove entirely.

The union claimed instructors would then only receive base salaries of about $50,000 and other workers could cop pay cuts of up to $100,000 under the company’s offers.

But Experience Co rejected the union’s claims and said its proposals have included “six-figure” salary offers.

“Skydive Australia is effectively a small business that proudly employs mostly young people in regional Australia,” O’Sullivan said, claiming the union’s November ambit claim “would add massive costs that are simply not viable for the business”.

Customers affected by the strike were being contacted directly and will be offered alternative options or full refunds.