Ryanair’s Ireland-based cabin crew have accepted a temporary 10% pay cut as part of a package of measures designed to save jobs amid Covid-19’s ongoing impact on travel, the union Fórsa reported on July 9.

A similar deal involving wage reductions of 5% to 10% was struck with the carrier’s British cabin crew on July 8, while last week Ryanair’s pilots in the UK and Ireland accepted a temporary pay cut of 20% to shield jobs, unions said.

The agreement Fórsa negotiated with Ryanair covers pay and other conditions for the LCC’s 700 cabin crew, employed directly or via agencies. Members backed the deal in a ballot by a majority of 62% on a turnout of 68%, the union said.

Fórsa official Ashley Connolly said the deal reflected the severity of the crisis aviation was facing.

“Our cabin crew members understand the severity of this crisis. They’ve backed an agreement that protects their jobs and provides for a review of circumstances should they improve sooner than expected. Equally, it was important for us to have the restoration of pay built into the agreement,” she said.

Ryanair pledged to restore pay over four years and said that the deal’s terms should avoid the need for redundancies, the Irish Times reported. The agreement also maps out rostering changes, part-time working, unpaid leave, and maximising Irish government Covid-19 wage support.

Also, the deal scraps an annual bonus of up to EUR1,800 euros (USD2,040), which had been due to expire in March 2021, replacing it with basic salary increases of EUR900 (USD1,020) for the year from July 2023 and EUR900 from July 2024.

Meanwhile, according to the British union Unite, Ryanair will keep all cabin crew in the UK in return for them accepting temporary pay reductions of 5% to 10%. Potential closures of the carrier’s bases at Bournemouth, Glasgow Prestwick, Leeds/Bradford, and London Southend have also been averted, Unite said.

The 5%, 7.5%, and 10% pay cuts will be implemented depending on employees’ earnings, with the lowest-paid seeing the smallest reductions. The cuts will be reversed in two tranches in 2023 and 2024, but Ryanair will scrap them earlier if it returns to pre-Covid-19 levels of business sooner.

“The agreement with Ryanair shows that the company has taken a more constructive and less damaging approach to dealing with the issues than many of its competitor airlines,” Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland said.

“The result of the negotiations with Unite demonstrates the commitment from our cabin crew and their unions in the UK to work with Ryanair as we work our way through this crisis over the next number of years,” commented Eddie Wilson, CEO of subsidiary Ryanair DAC.

Ryanair pilots both in the UK and in Ireland accepted last week a temporary pay cut of 20% to safeguard jobs. Their salaries will be restored to 100% over the next four years, according to the unions British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) and Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA).