Ryanair (FR, Dublin International), which has warned it may cut up to 3,000 jobs in Europe, told employees in France it was cutting pilots' salaries by 20% and those of flight attendants by 10%, the news agency AFP reported. Those already on a minimum wage will have their hours reduced. Unions accused the company of “redundancy blackmail.”
The LCC's ultimatum to its French employees is to choose between the five-year pay cut or accept redundancies, including 29% of pilot jobs lost and 27% for co-pilots.
According to confidential documents seen by local media, Ryanair proposed that the wage cuts would take effect from July 1 and progressively increase to eventually reach their current levels by July 2025.
For pilots, this would mean a 12% loss of salary on average during the period. For cabin crew, paid working time would drop from 2,000 to 1,600 hours a year, resulting in a loss of EUR308 (USD345) per month for those earning EUR1,539 (USD1,725) monthly, according to unions, taking it below the minimum wage.
The Syndicat National des Pilots de Ligne and the cabin crew union SNPNC-FO both said they had been given five days to respond.
“France isn’t the wild west,” protested Damien Mourgues, a cabin crew union representative.
“Blackmail is never an option,” Bruno Le Maire, France's finance minister, told RTL Radio. “Jobs will be protected by imaginative solutions and definitely not through blackmail.”
Ryanair opened its third base in France, at Toulouse Blagnac, in October 2019, following those at Bordeaux Mérignac and Marseilles which opened in summer 2019.
