TEAM parity case opens

The High Court yesterday began a hearing to assess what compensation is due to a number of workers who returned to Aer Lingus in 1998 from TEAM Aer Lingus but failed to be treated on the same basis as comparable Aer Lingus staff who remained with the airline.

Mr Justice Kearns told counsel for the workers and Aer Lingus that he had held in a decision last October that the workers, on their return to Aer Lingus in 1998, were entitled to be put on maintenance work or to be given its monetary value for such "reasonable" time as might be implied from the assurances given to them in a letter from the company at the time of their departure to TEAM.

After heraing submissions yesterday, he held that "reasonable" time was to date from when they returned to Aer Lingus in 1998 until his October judgment.

In that decision, he ruled that the plaintiffs who returned to work with Aer Lingus in 1998 from TEAM were entitled to be paid at the same level as engineers who did not go to TEAM.

The judge also expressed concern the court was being sucked into an industrial relations dispute and a form of industrial mediation.

In his judgment last October, Mr Justice Kearns held that the claimants were entitled to be treated as if they had never transferred to TEAM.

He found they were entitled to all appropriate increments or benefits on the basis that they had earned and achieved the same seniority by 1998 as those employeees who did not transfer.

The workers subsequently claimed that letters sent to them in December last by Aer Lingus solicitors which, they alleged, threatened them with redundancy, and further letters sent last month, placed Aer Lingus in contempt of the court's decision.

Last month, Mr Justice Kearns agreed and held the letters of December 20th were unwarranted and improper.

He described the letters as preemptive behaviour by the company in bringing pressure to resolve the issues in a particular way. He said he did not intend imposing any fine but added that the letters should be withdrawn.

Some 55 workers claimed the company had improperly sought to influence and interfere with them by imposing on them its own interpretation of legal proceedings last year.