Aer Lingus will reimburse pay deducted from some pilots sanctioned during last summer’s industrial action, it has emerged.
The airline withheld pay from some pilots for their “failure to join” – a sanction used by airlines when a pilot does not show up to operate a flight – as they were complying with their union’s work-to-rule during the pay dispute.
The Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (Ialpa) trade union told members this week that Aer Lingus had agreed to rescind the sanction and to reimburse those whose pay it deducted as a result.
A letter from Aer Lingus chief operations officer Adrian Dunne to the union confirms the carrier will remove the failure to join sanction and “reimburse the associated salary deductions”.
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Ialpa’s notice to members welcomed the gesture as “positive”, saying it would allow both sides to rebuild their relationship following the dispute. Mr Dunne’s letter acknowledges that the airline wants to show its commitment to a “reset of the relationship” between management and pilots.
A failure to join sanction is regarded as serious in the air travel industry as it means that a pilot did not turn up for a scheduled flight.
Payslips seen by The Irish Times in the wake of the dispute showed deductions marked “Industrial Action”. The amounts involved were up to €1,500, union sources said at the time.
Ialpa’s industrial action consisted mostly of a work-to-rule, which involved pilots showing up for rostered duties but refusing changes to those rosters and not working out of hours or overtime. The dispute ended in July when pilots voted overwhelmingly to accept a 17.75 per cent pay rise brokered by the Labour Court following several meetings between the sides.
Union officials raised concerns about the sanction and pay deductions when they debated whether to recommend that settlement to members, prompting the company to indicate that it would deal with the issue.
The pilots’ vote on July 18th ended a pay dispute that dates back almost two years to a claim lodged by Ialpa in late 2022.
Aer Lingus this month confirmed that the industrial action cost €55 million with an unquantifiable impact on forward bookings.
The industrial action ran for two weeks from Wednesday, June 26th, and included an eight-hour strike on Saturday, June 29th. The work-to-rule denied Aer Lingus the flexibility needed to operate a full schedule at its busiest time of year.
In response, the carrier cancelled 610 flights, 573 of them several days in advance of schedule, to preserve as many services as possible, hitting more than 90,000 passengers in all.
Aer Lingus is one of several airlines due in the High Court next month to challenge passenger limits imposed by planners on Dublin Airport, where it is one of the biggest airlines.
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