Air hostess loses Irish bid for redundancy payments

A FORMER British Midland air hostess has failed in her bid to receive redundancy payments under Irish terms, having already accepted a package under British law.

Yvonne Scales, 40, had been working as cabin crew with the airline at its Manchester base when it announced there would be redundancies there.

An Employment Appeals Tribunal in Dublin heard yesterday that she was given the option of a trial period working in the airline’s Irish base, or of taking up the redundancy terms on offer based on her work in Manchester, provided she made that decision within a certain timeframe.

Ms Scales, who had worked for the airline since 2000, moved to Ireland in April 2009 but then availed of the Manchester redundancy terms in October of that year.

However, early in 2010 redundancies were announced in Dublin and under the terms of a deal struck with the Unite trade union, staff there were entitled to redundancy terms worth approximately double that on offer in Manchester.

However, the tribunal also heard that Ms Scales’s working hours had halved when she moved to Dublin, meaning any redundancy at Irish rates would have been comparable to what she received in Manchester.

Brian Gormley of UNITE, representing Ms Scales, said there would also have been additional benefits and “to Ms Scales it is a very important principle”.

British Midland denied Ms Scales’s claims and said no redundancies were announced in Dublin in 2009, while the Manchester redundancies had not come “out of the blue”.

The tribunal panel ruled against Ms Scales’s claim.