Aer Lingus workers want commission intervention

UNIONS representing the 55 Aer Lingus employees at Shannon Airport, who the company want to transfer to Dublin or accept redundancy, have called for the matter to be addressed by The Labour Relations Commission.

Aer Lingus want to sell their Shannon hangar, which would mean the employees affected would either have to move to Dublin or take redundancy. It is possible that Aer Lingus flights could be disrupted later this summer if the company and the unions cannot reach agreement.

Brian Gormley, regional officer with the Unite trade union, said at a meeting on Tuesday between the union and the workers concerned, they decided they wanted the Labour Relations Commission to intervene. “The group came to a couple of decisions. One, that we would refer the matter of the redundancies to the Labour Relations Commission on the basis that we believe they would constitute compulsory redundancy, which the company is saying they don’t. The other thing is we agreed the Shannon group would attend a meeting next Tuesday and seek the support of their colleagues for a ballot for industrial action, should the company impose unilateral redundancies of a compulsory nature. We’re very much focused on those issues at the moment,” Mr Gormley explained.

He said his union has held informal talks with Aer Lingus. “We’ve had a couple of meetings regarding the alternative plan. We haven’t had a fully fledged industrial relations meeting but I wrote to the company this morning and informed them of our current position and advised them that we would be available to meet them should they feel it would be beneficial. We’ll proceed anyway because generally these things end up in the Labour Court so the sooner we get in there the better. Nobody is looking for a dispute or to disrupt passenger traffic but we can’t have our members treated so badly by the company either. The timescale is in the hands of the Labour Relations Commission. They have a lot of calls on their time but we would expect that Aer Lingus will not act outside of our agreement until the Labour Court has made any final recommendation,” he added.

Mr Gormley also warned Aer Lingus that they should not seek to interfere with the work practices of the 55 employees until the proposed Labour Relations Commission sitting has taken place.

“We don’t believe the company should act to remove people’s entitlement or ability to work until such time as all available industrial processes have been completed. We’ve been in sticky situations before and the Labour Court has been beneficial to both sides,” he concluded.