Former Team workers accuse Aer Lingus of breaching court ruling

Aer Lingus has been accused before the High Court of breaching a Supreme Court decision requiring it to treat 44 workers with Team Aer Lingus on the same basis as comparable Aer Lingus staff who remained with the national airline.

In the latest stage of a long and complex legal battle, the former Team engineers, who have been redeployed as clerical workers, baggage handlers and cleaners, have asked the High Court to grant an injunction compelling Aer Lingus to give them from now and until their retirement the same wages and entitlements as if they had never left the airline. They say those entitlements should be backdated to March 2006, when the Supreme Court made formal declarations in their case.

They also want to be paid compensation for the failure, from the time they returned to Aer Lingus in 1998 to the March 2006 Supreme Court ruling, to be paid their entitlements. They are also seeking damages, including aggravated and punitive damages, because of their treatment by the airline.

Aer Lingus has denied any breach and contends that, as the workers have been redeployed, they are entitled only to the pay and conditions applicable to their new positions. It claims the proceedings are frivolous and vexatious and that some of the claims have been brought outside the relevant legal time limits.

The actions by the 44 workers opened yesterday before Ms Justice Mary Laffoy and are expected to last three days. They are the latest proceedings brought by the former Team workers after they returned to Aer Lingus in 1998 following the collapse of Team and its sale to FLS. The Supreme Court declared in March 2006 that, when the workers transferred to Team from 1989, they did so on the basis of contractually binding guarantees from Aer Lingus management, reached after negotiations between Aer Lingus and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

The case continues today.