900 jobs to go as airline seeks to save €97m

AER LINGUS last night confirmed it is to press ahead with €97 million in cost-saving measures with the loss of almost 900 jobs, 200 more than it had originally intended.

The company yesterday said it could not accept proposals put forward by worker unions as alternatives to its plans to introduce pay cuts, 676 job losses and changes in pension arrangements.

Management told an extraordinary board meeting of the airline that the collapse of talks on those alternatives had left it with no option but to press ahead with its original plan and also to seek further job losses both in ground and air crew through the grounding of additional aircraft.

“Aer Lingus and all of its employees have not reached agreement in respect of all aspects of the proposed transformation plan,” said the airline’s chief executive Christoph Mueller.

“We have narrowed the gap with most union groups on the achievement of sustainable savings and this has brought us very close to signature with them.

“The exception to this promising outcome is the Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA) and to a lesser extent, cabin crew. Instead of sustainable savings of a structural nature, only temporary savings over a short few years were offered by IALPA.

“Aer Lingus was asked for very high compensation in return.

“Our pilot compensation and productivity remains out of line with the compensation and productivity of our competitors.”

He said in the absence of real cost savings being delivered from all employee groups, Aer Lingus had to resort to “other measures”.

“The board and management will now move to reduce capacity, further eliminating routes which are loss-making as a result of our high cost base.

“This will result in the operation of fewer aircraft, which in turn will lead to additional redundancies beyond those included in the transformation plan.

“It is very likely that these redundancies will commence immediately and will be compulsory.”

A further board meeting of Aer Lingus is due to take place on Friday, at which details of the aircraft to be grounded will be discussed.

Christine Carney of IMPACT, representing cabin crew, said the discussions on alternatives to the company’s proposals for savings had been “very difficult”, with the sides working through the night to try to reach some accommodation.

“We believe we had developed a proposal which [would] go a very long way to achieving the company’s targets for cabin crew,” she said.

Unions said they were very disappointed that talks had collapsed and said they remained open to discussions at the Labour Relations Commission or the National Implementation Body.