A RIGHTS commissioner has found that a decision by Aer Lingus not to pay an increment of over €900 due to a pilot last April represented an unlawful deduction of wages.

Union sources said that the ruling by the rights commissioner, which was issued last Thursday, would be carefully studied by more than 400 other pilots at the airline.

The pilot concerned had claimed that it was an express and/or implied term in his contract that he would progress annually on an incremental scale.

He said that every year he had received an incremental increase on April 1st – with the exception of 2002 when none was paid following an agreement between his representative body, the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association, and Aer Lingus.

However, he said the airline had failed to pay the increment due in April 2009, which would have brought his salary to €104,280.

The pilot maintained that on April 14th this year his trade union had requested that the increment be paid and had argued that a refusal to do so represented a breach of his contract and of the Payment of Wages Act.

The pilot said that the company, in reply, had made no reference to its responsibilities under this legislation and had ignored the request to indicate any lawful basis for its refusal to pay the increment.

He also maintained that a collective agreement reached between his union and Aer Lingus in 2008 – known as PCI 07 – had included a guarantee that there would be no further initiatives to reduce pilots’ pay before April 2011.

Aer Lingus contended that the non-payment of an increment in all of the circumstances did not represent a breach of the legislation. It argued that it was not open to an employee to assert that “a non-increase in pay is in fact a deduction”.

However, rights commissioner Gaye Cunningham noted that the claimant’s contract of employment stated that the salary was on a scale “with a starting point”.

She said that while it was clear that the company was facing financial difficulties, section 5 (1) of the Payment of Wages Act provided that employers shall not make a deduction unless this was authorised by statute, by virtue of a term in the employee’s contract or with the prior written consent of the employee.