Aer Lingus and unions still in dispute over rostering

MORE than three months after Aer Lingus and its cabin crew signed off on new cost-saving measures, unions and management are still in dispute over the rostering element which is key to those savings.

And the situation has got considerably worse with news that not even an arbitrator has been able to find common ground between the two sides.

On Monday, IMPACT trade union, which represents the airline’s cabin staff, will start a series of briefings to its members in the country’s airports.

It is expected they will be told the arbitrator in the talks, Kieran Mulvey, has not been able to find a deal on shifts and the union will have to engage in direct negotiations with the company.

At the heart of the impasse is how the new 850 annual hours workload which had initially been agreed between the two sides, will be operated in practice.

According to Industrial Relations News, the gap in the talks between the agreed and targeted 850 hours, and the number of hours that many cabin crew work at present, is as high as 100 hours year and has proved to be insurmountable in the direct and mediated talks.

The fear is that, if cabin crew refuse to work the required 850 hours a year as laid down in the ‘Greenfield’ document which set out the total €97m across all the airline’s operations, Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller could revert back to the company’s original threat to issue compulsory redundancy notices to anyone who might be in dispute.

In February it threatened as many as 1,100 job losses across the airline if a full deal could not be reached.

A spokesman for the company said it noted the outcome of the arbitration, but would be making no further comment on the matter at this stage.