TRADE UNION Siptu has said there will be industrial action at Aer Lingus in about a fortnight unless there is a third-party intervention, or the company halts its plans for redundancies and outsourcing at the airline.
Siptu last night said its members at Aer Lingus had voted overwhelmingly for strike action if the airline attempted to force through a highly controversial cost-cutting plan aimed at saving €74 million.
Aer Lingus is seeking to introduce nearly 1,500 job cuts through outsourcing, voluntary redundancy or early retirement.
However, Siptu said its members at the airline had voted by a margin of 80 per cent in favour of industrial action, up to and including full-scale strike action, if management attempted to introduce the plan without agreement.
Siptu members also voted in a separate ballot for more limited industrial action if the union wanted to take such action. Siptu national industrial secretary Gerry McCormack said last night that it would be serving strike notice on Aer Lingus over the next day or so.
Under existing agreements with the company, the union has to give 14 days’ notice of strike action.
In a statement last night, Mr McCormack said: “We regret the disruption to the public that will almost certainly begin before December 1st, and I want to stress that we remain open to enter a talks process to resolve this dispute with management.
“However, management walked out of talks last week and made a difficult situation worse by the ham-fisted attempt to intimidate our members with the chief executive’s webcast yesterday, which referred to the management outsourcing plan as ‘unstoppable and irreversible’,” he said.
Siptu called on management “to avert mass disruption to the travelling public by entering talks with us now”. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions asked the Government to convene the National Implementation Body, the main trouble-shooting mechanism under social partnership, to try to resolve the dispute.
Aer Lingus said last night it was “very disappointed with the result of the Siptu ballot and for the uncertainty that has been created for our customers. However, the results does not obviate the absolute necessity for the urgent delivery of the planned €74 million in cost savings”.
The company on Thursday published details of the severance package and early retirement scheme on offer to staff. It has set a deadline of December 15th for staff to respond to the offer.
However, Siptu advised its members not to respond to what it called “this attempt to pressurise them into accepting redundancy”.
Aer Lingus chief financial officer Seán Coyle said the company would issue an interim financial statement next week confirming losses of over €20 million.
As part of its cost-containment plan, Aer Lingus would eliminate its in-house check-in and baggage handling, cargo and catering divisions at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. Staff in these areas would be offered a transfer to a new service provider or invited to take a voluntary redundancy package.
For cabin crew, Aer Lingus proposed closing bases in Shannon and Heathrow and offering staff transfers to Dublin or Cork.