Today Aer Lingus will discover whether it will be able to sell its aircraft maintenance subsidiary, TEAM, to the Danish company, FLS Aerospace. Neither Aer Lingus nor union sources were willing to speculate yesterday on whether enough TEAM employees would vote to accept transfer of employment proposals to make the takeover by FLS commercially viable.
Although TEAM Aer Lingus is offering £54.6 million to buy out letters of guarantee and the other rights of TEAM workers, there is still considerable opposition towards the FLS takeover. Resistance remains especially strong among more than 1,100 workers who hold the letters of guarantee, even though these can expect to receive amounts well in excess of £40,000 each for agreeing to the transfer.
The company needs a majority acceptance of the proposals that exceeds 70 per cent to make the sale of TEAM practicable. The company suffered a setback on Tuesday when a TEAM employee, Mr John Garvan Moore, won a case in the High Court establishing that his transfer from Aer Lingus to TEAM in 1990 had not changed his status as an Aer Lingus employee.
In an out-of-court settlement, Mr Moore is understood to have received £4,000 in damages and costs from the company. A significant number of TEAM employees holding letters of guarantee deferred voting until they heard the outcome of the case and it is thought this may have given a boost to the No vote.
Nearly 200 TEAM workers have initiated similar actions and many of them believe that the High Court declaration also means they are entitled to pay rises given to other Aer Lingus employees, but denied to them under the TEAM restructuring since 1994. However, that issue remains to be tested in the courts.