Members of the Retired Aviation Staff Association are to seek action over their pensions, which, they say, have fallen 25 per cent behind their public service counterparts in the past 10 years.
The association represents 4,500 former employees of Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta and covers all grades, excluding pilots.
The annual general meeting of the association at Dublin Airport today is expected to empower a sub-committee, the pension action committee, to mount a co-ordinated campaign to seek redress for the pensioners of the State-owned aviation companies.
Mr Paddy Mullins said yesterday that before 1970 pensions in Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta were in line with comparable grades throughout the civil service. The only difference was that workers in semi-State companies participated in contributory schemes, while civil servants' pensions were non-contributory.
"Around 1969 there was a directive from the Department of Finance which stipulated that the contributions from employees and the employers at Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta should be equalised."
It was envisaged this new arrangement should obtain right across the semi-State sector, he added.
This was a radical move away from the convention under which employers normally contributed twice the amount paid by employees into a pension fund.
Over the years, however, civil service pensions had moved in line with salaries and "bit by bit companies such as the ESB, Bord Failte, An Post etc progressively adopted the same tactics". In these cases the employers willingly increased their contributions to keep pensions in line with earnings.
In the aviation companies, however, the 6.375 per cent contribution remained static, with employers and workers paying equal proportions.
Mr Mullins said the position of the aviation companies' pensions had been overlooked by the people most affected in deference to other "on-going wage problems and industrial relations issues". Also, most people were relatively young when the guidelines became mandatory and had not kept a close eye on developments, he said.
The current scheme did not guarantee any increase. "It is at the discretion of the fund, which has a representative from the employers' and workers' sides and is chaired by Prof Brendan Walsh of UCD," he said.
The association is particularly aggrieved that the greatest increase it can get is strictly in line with the CPI index, and not the current national wage agreement.
"Take an aviation worker who retired on a pension of £5,000 per annum 10 years ago: that would now be increased to £6,300. If it was linked to wage movements as in the civil service it would be worth £8,000," Mr Mullins said.
The staff association is seeking a significant capital injection from the Government "to bring us into line with other pension schemes". In addition, it insists the employer companies' regular contributions will have to be increased to the levels paid by other State employers.