JILL MACDONALD,
Sir - In response to Gerard Reynolds (January 17th) I would like to point out several factors involved in the redundancies of pilots at Aer Lingus of which he is clearly ignorant.
I am one of the 10 pilots made redundant as of January 18th and I wholly agree with Mr Reynolds when he says that business leaders should be held accountable for their actions.
However, he then continues on to comment about the ebb and flow of economics and asks if Aer Lingus pilots are more entitled to earn a living than those in the IT sector. I would like his response to the following:
Are his colleagues owed more than 1,600 weeks of leave? Are they the lowest paid in their industry? Did they forfeit a 21 per cent pay increase on the condition that there were no involuntary redundancies?
Did they establish a binding agreement with their company which states that several conditions must be met before involuntary redundancies are sought only to be broken by the company with the events of the last two days?
Did they accept a pay freeze for the next two years to alleviate some of the financial burden on the company? Were their specific departments singled out to receive a considerably less attractive redundancy package than other departments - which subsequently resulted in more senior members not availing of the offer despite a desire to? I foresee the answers to these questions will be no.
You can only give so much; then comes the time to take a stand. The pilot body is a group of professionals committed to the future of Aer Lingus. We were the only group in the company not to strike last year and we have voted in the survival plan that, we hope, will secure Aer Lingus as a successful, profitable international carrier.
Industrial action is not desirable. It will not be taken on a "whim", as Mr Reynolds suggests. We do not want to disrupt passengers but we are being backed into a corner.
To Mr Reynolds I would say: please research the subject before jumping to conclusions. - Yours, etc.,
JILL MACDONALD, (Aer Lingus first officer), Drumcondra, Dublin 9.