Aer Lingus pilots have rejected Labour Court proposals aimed at brokering an interim deal in their pay row with the airline, but both sides have indicated they are open to further talks.
Members of the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (Ialpa) voted over the last week on a Labour Court recommendation that they accept pay hikes totalling 9.25 per cent and return to negotiations with management over deadlocked issues.
Ialpa confirmed on Monday that 94.4 per cent of the 98 per cent of its members who voted rejected the proposals, a move the union’s executive recommended as it argued the proposal failed to address pilots’ key concerns.
Captain Daniel Langan, Ialpa’s vice president finance, argued that the pay offer did not reflect the €225 million profit that Aer Lingus made last year.
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“Reduced pay, terms and conditions were accepted by Aer Lingus pilots during the Covid crisis to help the company recover from the pandemic,” he said.
“However, management failed to reverse these measures, which include lower pay scales for new entrants, while they report bumper profits.”
Capt Langan added that new pilots at the airline earn up to 10 per cent less than those hired before the pandemic.
Ialpa is seeking increases of more than 20 per cent to compensate members for inflation and what the union says were their efforts in keeping Aer Lingus in business during the pandemic.
Union president, Captain Mark Tighe, stressed that the union remained open to discussing an improved pay offer with Aer Lingus.
“Any new pay offer needs to account for the loss of earnings due to inflation and to bring Aer Lingus pilots’ pay up to the rates of competitor airlines,” he said.
Capt Tighe maintained that pilots last received a salary increase in 2019. He pointed out that Central Statistics Office figures published last week showed that Irish workers’ pay had grown by an average of 24 per cent since then.
Aer Lingus responded that notwithstanding members’ vote to reject the Labour Court recommendations, the airline “remains available for direct discussions with Ialpa”.
The company said that it would accept the Labour Court decision when it was published late last month and pledged to proceed with the measures that it outlined.
Aer Lingus disputes several of the union’s claims, including that pilots have not received an increase since 2019.
The sides also disagree over the cost of flexible summer leave for pilots agreed in 2019, the cost of which the airline maintains was meant to have been accounted for in a pay offer made late in 2023.
Pilots rejected that 8.5 per cent offer from in internal company pay tribunal early this year, sparking the current dispute.
Management maintains that factoring in the flexible leave costs brings their pay increase demands to 27 per cent while Ialpa’s calculation is that the figure is 23.88 per cent.
The Labour Court’s recommendation highlighted gaps between the two sides on a number of issues. It proposed that pilots’ accept pay increases of 9.25 per cent over several stages while referring talks on the leave and other sticking points back to the Workplace Relations Commission.
It then proposed that if the sides could not reach agreement by August, they could refer outstanding questions back to the court for a definitive recommendation.
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