Analysis:Unions and management each won enough to save face, writes Martin Wall, Industry Correspondent
The agreement reached early yesterday morning between management at Aer Lingus and its pilots on the establishment of a new base in Belfast represents a significant step forward in the airline's reform plans.
However, the Belfast operation was only one element of this overall strategy and the potential for further industrial relations trouble remains high.
Unions are already angry at a pay freeze put in place by management earlier this month for all 3,700 staff until a €20 million cost-cutting plan is implemented.
If, as seems likely, management intends to press ahead over the coming weeks with the implementation of these cost-cutting measures in the absence of any negotiated agreement, passengers could again face the prospect of disruption.
However, the tactics adopted by management in recent days, such as refusing to pay the national agreement awards, suspending pilots without pay and effectively risking a full-scale shutdown of operations, showed how far it was prepared to go to secure movement on its reform plans.
In part this policy was aimed at sending a message to the unions that they were now dealing with a commercial private company and that the old semi-state rules no longer applied.
The response of the other unions to the emergence of this more muscular management style will be interesting to watch when it comes to the implementation of the new cost-cutting initiatives.
Although it has not yet publicly acknowledged it, the company considers the new deal with pilots to be "momentous" as it will provide a template not only for the new Belfast base but any other similar facility established outside of the Republic of Ireland.
Aer Lingus views the establishment of such overseas bases as key elements in its growth strategy for the future. It believes the new deal will allow it to establish such facilities in the years ahead without having to go through the same rows all over again.
However, despite the tough management tactics and public warning that the dispute was essentially over who ran the company, the striking of the deal at the LRC would appear to have been a close-run thing at times.
The LRC tabled a recommendation to the parties at about 3am yesterday after it became clear that they were not able to reach an agreement.
The talks had been something of a roller coaster, with progress reported in the early stages before they nearly collapsed close to midnight on Sunday when it emerged that the company had already offered detailed contracts to seven aircraft captains for the Belfast base.
The deal brokered by the LRC offered enough to each side to allow them to accept the overall package.
Management is delighted to have secured "a global base agreement" which spells out that local pay and conditions will apply in Belfast and any future bases.
It has argued strongly that the pay on offer in Belfast will, at entry level, be higher than that in the Republic.
However, it was anxious that the conditions of employment - in particular the working practices - would be different to those set out in existing agreements in the Republic.
Management has maintained that over the years as a semi-state company, a raft of restrictive practices governing issues such as holidays, stopovers after flights, and rest periods between flights, had built up. Under the deal it will be able to start again with local working conditions.
However, the agreement does recognise Impact as the representative body for pilots in Belfast. This means that the union will have some role in negotiating pay and conditions in the future, although not those to apply on day one of the new operation.
Aer Lingus management has also succeeded in its aim that the existing defined benefit pension scheme for pilots, which it considers to be very generous, would not be extended to Belfast, although some transitional arrangements have been put in place.
For the Irish Airline Pilots' Association the big area in which it gained was the right of existing pilots to transfer to new bases.
Under the new deal promotions to the rank of aircraft captain at any base internationally will be on the basis of seniority rather than by direct entry.
While management is very pleased with the new deal, the union is also happy that old-fashioned late-night negotiations saw the company dragged back from the brink of a highly damaging dispute.
As one union source said: "last Thursday management was briefing that this was the Irish equivalent of the miners' strike. There was talk around the place of a crossroads dispute and Armageddon. Now after 24 hours in the LRC we have a deal that everyone is reasonably happy with. That might augur well for the future with the other outstanding issues."