Aer Lingus chief refuses to condemn leaked memo

AER LINGUS chairman John Sharman yesterday refused to condemn a leaked document containing proposals to force staff to accept redundancy, saying the measures had never become company policy.

In a confrontational meeting of the Oireachtas Transport Committee yesterday, Mr Sharman insisted the controversial human resources memo was one of many drafts drawn up by each Aer Lingus department as the company prepared its business plan last summer.

“It was one small piece in the jigsaw puzzle that resulted in the business plan,” he said.

Calling the leak despicable, Mr Sharman refused to condemn the memo, which included 12 ways of forcing staff to leave, saying it had never become part of the final business plan.

“To condemn something, something has to have existed as a plan,” he said.

However, SIPTU and committee members across all parties accused Aer

Lingus of having actively pursued the proposals in the document regardless of whether it appeared in the company’s final plan.

SIPTU national industrial secretary Michael Halpenny said some intimidated employees who had sought legal advice found that an unfair dismissals case would be less profitable than accepting the company’s redundancy package.

“This was a clear plan in our view ... This was the detonator, this was the key in the engine that was going to drive it,” he said.

Mr Halpenny said all 12 suggestions, which included giving workers with families anti-social shifts and “tapping supervisors on the shoulder” to say they had no future with the company, had been put into practice.