Aer Lingus ground and cabin crew will seek a 4 per cent pay increase early next year after the airline’s pilots won a 17.75 per cent boost following a bitter summer dispute.
The carrier’s ground and cabin crew last year accepted a 12.25 per cent increase before the pilots’ industrial action. Their deal allowed them to re-enter talks with the company should any other group of workers reach better terms.
Union officials confirmed that representatives of those employees will begin talks with the company on a further 4 per cent increase early next year.
Aer Lingus has already agreed to raise ground and cabin crew pay by a further 1.5 per cent from October 1st, 2025, leaving a 4 per cent difference with pilots.
Terry Gill, the Siptu organiser who represents around 1,300 workers at the airline, said unions had agreed with management to begin talks on the 4 per cent in the new year.
He explained that Aer Lingus will pay 3 per cent under the current agreement in January. Next month it will pay a €750 voucher to cabin and ground crew, which amounts to a once-off 1.5 per cent increase.
The airline agreed to make that once-off boost permanent from October next year after meeting cabin and ground crew representatives under the auspices of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).
Fórsa represents cabin crew and administrative staff, while Siptu, Connect and Unite represent ground crew and craft workers.
ICTU confirmed it would discuss the implications of the pilots’ deal for other Aer Lingus staff shortly after its acceptance in July.
The airline did not comment on Thursday. Last summer it argued that differences between the two agreements meant the clause allowing cabin and ground crew to revisit their deal should not be triggered.
The Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (IALPA), a branch of Fórsa, got the 17.75 per cent increase following a Labour Court recommendation.
The court’s move ended three weeks of industrial action in June and July that included a one-day strike and refusal to work overtime or out of hours which forced Aer Lingus to cancel about one in every eight flights through that period.
Aer Lingus’s deal giving all other staff 12.25 per cent increases allowed any of those groups to reopen talks should it give any other workers a greater increase that was not tied to them doing more work.
Airline management pointed out in the summer that the pilots’ deal differed from this as it ran until the end of 2026, as opposed to 2025 for other staff, and that the jettisoning of a deal on summer leave struck in 2019 would result in greater productivity.
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