Siptu seeks legal advice as it calls off airport strikes after court move

Siptu is to seek legal advice on how it can press ahead with strikes at the country’s airports in the event that the ongoing pensions dispute remains unresolved.

The High Court yesterday granted an injunction to the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) preventing tomorrow’s four-hour stoppages from going ahead.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan said the “legal validity” of the ballot for the action by Siptu members at the DAA over the ongoing pension dispute was “clearly in issue”.

He said the union had balloted only DAA workers who have participated in the IASS pension scheme. He said the question arose as to whether Siptu should have balloted all its members at DAA as all of the union’s members there would be asked to engage in action. Furthermore he said the union had balloted members of essential services such as the airport police, fire service and airport search units. The judge said “a serious issue arises for determination” whether they were entitled to be balloted as they are subject to agreements preventing them from engaging in industrial action before other procedures have been exhausted.

Afterwards Siptu said it was cancelling action by both its members in the airports and those employed by Aer Lingus, but it said that did not resolve the overall pensions dispute.

“Accordingly, we will be consulting with our legal advisers with a view to developing a strategy to enable us to exercise our right to withdraw labour and take industrial action in the absence of a fair resolution of the pensions issue within a reasonable time,” said the union’s pensions advisor Dermot O’Loughlin.

The DAA welcomed the court’s decision to grant the injunction and called on Siptu to focus on engaging with the Government-sponsored expert panel established last week to find a resolution to the ongoing dispute over the near-€800m hole in the defined benefit pension scheme.

However, Aer Lingus said Siptu’s decision to stand down its work stoppage was “too little too late”.

“The damage has already been done,” a spokesman said. “The decision comes less than 36 hours before the stoppage was due to commence. The cloud of uncertainty created by the strike threat has damaged Aer Lingus’s business and disrupted thousands of our customers. The changes made to our flight schedule to circumvent the planned strike cannot be undone at such short notice. This is yet another occasion where the trade union has cynically caused damage threatening a strike only to withdraw their strike notice at the last minute.”