Aer Lingus cabin and ground crew will seek a 4 per cent pay hike in coming weeks after pilots won a 17.75 per cent boost last year following a dispute.
Cabin and ground grew at the airline accepted a 12.25 per cent increase in late 2023 before the pilots’ industrial action last summer.
Unions including Siptu, Fórsa and Unite believe the pilots’ award triggered a clause in their own deals with Aer Lingus allowing their members to seek further increases should any other group in the company get better terms.
Siptu organiser Terry Gill confirmed over the weekend that the organisations were seeking a meeting with the airline under the auspices of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to discuss a 4 per cent increase for their members.
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He added that the unions were hopeful that the meeting would take place in early February but said they had yet to set a definite date.
Siptu represents about 1,300 ground staff at Aer Lingus airline while Fórsa is responsible for cabin crew and Unite the airline’s craft workers.
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Aer Lingus’s deal giving staff other than pilots a 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.
The airline did not comment at the weekend, but it is understood to have committed to meeting cabin and ground crew unions to discuss pay.
Last year, Aer Lingus noted that several elements of the pilots’ pay deal meant it did not trigger the clause allowing other unions to reopen pay talks.
The agreement with the Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association (Ialpa), part of Fórsa, runs until the end of 2026 as opposed to the end of this year for ground staff.
The Ialpa agreement also jettisoned an earlier deal on flexible summer leave for pilots struck in 2019, which Aer Lingus maintained would result in productivity.
The first rumblings of what ultimately sparked three weeks of industrial action last summer were heard about 12 months ago when Ialpa members voted to reject pay increases along the lines of those agreed with other staff.
Ialpa sought a 24 per cent increase to compensate members for inflation and to bring their pay in line with rates in other airlines.
Pilots began a work to rule in June, and halted work completely for eight hours on the 29th of the month, forcing the airline to cancel about one in eight flights over three weeks, hitting more than 90,000 passengers.
The work to rule involved pilots showing up for rostered duties but refusing changes to their rosters and not working extra hours or overtime, denying the airline the flexibility it needed to operate its busy summer schedule.
A deal brokered by the Labour Court ultimately ended the dispute. Ialpa maintained through the process that members were not willing to increase productivity in return for more pay.
The union and the company pledged to work to rebuild relations late last year.
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