Ryanair (FR, Dublin International) has warned it may close its bases at Cork and Shannon airports and lay off up to 120 pilots after talks with the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association ended without agreement.
The negotiations on job cuts reached the end of their legally required 30-day consultation period on June 26. The union then sought an extension, but the carrier accused the union of “stalling tactics”, the Irish Times reported.
Ryanair sent pilots a memo via the company’s internal messaging system urging them to accept its proposals, which include a 20% pay cut that would gradually be reversed over four years, a range of work available via job shares, and unpaid leave. It asked pilots to click a button in the memo to accept.
The size of the job losses - part of 3,000 planned job cuts in several markets - and whether bases at Cork and Shannon would remain, depend on the number of acceptances it received, it said.
Fórsa, Ireland’s largest public service union of which the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association is a part, said in its own memo to pilots on June 26 that Ryanair’s latest proposal was unacceptable as it would leave pilots temporarily on zero-hour contracts. It also provided no guarantee that job losses would be avoided, it said.
The union added that it had written to Ryanair to “suggest an extension to work towards an agreement and indicating that we were happy to work with a third party” but had not received a reply.
Ryanair, which is set to restore 40% of its capacity from July 1, has warned that it will be competing from now on against rivals such as Lufthansa, Air France, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines that have received billions of euros in government bailouts.
The Irish government, meanwhile, has said it will lift quarantine rules on arriving passengers from July 9.
