Aer Lingus caterers and clerical staff are to decide today whether to call off this week's strike action and accept invitations to Labour Court talks.
It is thought that clerical staff, who grounded the Aer Lingus fleet with a four-hour stoppage last Friday, may accept the offer. But if they do it will be by a narrow margin.
The caterers are expected to reject the invitation because of the precondition that they defer Thursday's strike. If the strike goes ahead it should not affect flights, only the provision of hot meals. However, a lot would depend on the attitude of other SIPTU members to the caterers' pickets.
If the caterers defer their action, all the major staff groupings in Aer Lingus would be back in formal negotiations, through the Labour Court, the LRC or local bargaining. But if caterers or clerical staff reject the Labour Court invitations it could help destabilise negotiations for other groups, such as baggage-handlers and cabin crew.
Baggage-handlers are currently considering new proposals from the company while substantive talks are to begin today between Aer Lingus, IMPACT and SIPTU at the Labour Relations Commission on the cabin crew pay claim. Action by IMPACT cabin crew on October 17th forced the company to ground the fleet for 24 hours.
IMPACT cabin crew have threatened to take action again because of lack of progress in talks. One problem has been a severe staff shortage at the Labour Relations Commission.
In an unrelated matter, Aer Lingus is to investigate an incident at Cork Airport on Sunday evening when one of the company's Fokker 50 commuter aircraft skidded on the runway and ran about 15 feet into the grass verge. There were no injuries.
Aer Lingus said there was no cause for concern over an incident at Dublin Airport yesterday morning when the pilot of the New York-Dublin flight indicated that there might be a problem with the aircraft's landing gear. In the event the 830 Airbus landed normally at 8.30 a.m.