AER LINGUS passengers face possible disruption from next month because of a row between management and cabin crew over the implementation of the company’s controversial €97 million cost-saving plan.
The trade union Impact, which represents cabin crew at the airline, yesterday said it was to ballot members for industrial action as part of an ongoing dispute over revised working hours. Under the terms of the cost-containment plan, which was agreed last March, flight time for cabin crew was to be increased to 850 hours per year.
However, there has been disagreement on how this would work in practice. Impact maintained yesterday that Aer Lingus had proceeded unilaterally to force changes to cabin crew rosters and to terms and conditions of employment.
The union said that the ballot was to give approval for industrial action up to and including strike action. It is understood that initially it would involve a work-to-rule within contract and for withdrawal of flexibility.
The union said that the proposed industrial action would include a withdrawal of labour “should Aer Lingus attempt to take action against any individual Impact cabin crew member”.
It is unclear at present how such industrial action would affect flight services at the airline if it is backed by cabin crew members of Impact.
However, Aer Lingus said last night that it did not anticipate operational disruption as a result of the proposed industrial action.
Details of how the new 850-hour flight-time requirements would work were to be finalised in talks between the union and management at the Labour Relations Commission.
But the union said an arbitration process at the Labour Relations Commission on the issue had been unsuccessful while attempts to resolve it in direct talks between the parties had also failed to produce an agreement.
An Aer Lingus spokesman said last night that 93 per cent of cabin crew had voted a number of months ago to support the cost-containment deal. He said that the company had a mandate and would continue to implement the changes.
Impact said that ballot papers for industrial action were posted to members of its cabin crew branch yesterday and that the ballot would close at 2pm on Monday, August 9th.
It said that in the event of the ballot being passed, a minimum of seven days notice would have to be served to Aer Lingus before industrial action could commence.
This means that any industrial action would not commence until the second half of August at the earliest.
Impact official Christina Carney said that the implementation of the new 850 hours flight-time target was achievable within the terms of existing agreements and contracts of employment of cabin crew.
“We see no reason for the company to breach those contracts and agreements in order to achieve this. However, the airline has proceeded unilaterally to force changes to cabin crew workers’ terms and conditions of employment,” she said.
In a letter to cabin crew members which accompanied the ballot paper, Ms Carney stated: “We regret to have to consider the taking of industrial action, but the company’s behaviour has left us with no choice. The purpose of the action is to protect cabin crew contracts and to ensure that the contracts are honoured and agreements are upheld.”
Initially cabin crew at Aer Lingus voted to reject the company’s cost-saving plan.
However, they later reversed their position following an announcement by Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller that the airline would make all 1,200 cabin crew redundant and re-employ most on inferior terms and conditions.
The company said 230 cabin crew would be made compulsorily redundant and that they would receive only their statutory entitlements.