‘No bias’ in Ryanair move to lay off Polish employee

The Labour Court has found that Ryanair did not discriminate on the grounds of nationality when laying off a Polish staff member.

Agnieszka Sprya made the claim after losing her job.

In culling its workforce for the winter season last year, Ryanair carried out an assessment of its staff by ranking their performance.

The lowest-ranked was an Irish staff member, while Ms Spyra ranked second last. The three lowest-ranking staff were due to be made redundant.

During the process, Ryanair decided, however, the Irish person should retain her job. Ms Spyra claimed that this amounted to prima facie evidence of discriminatory treatment.

In its evidence before the Labour Court, Ryanair argued the Irish person who kept her job “was a recent recruit and was making progress towards meeting the standards expected of her”. It decided it would be unfair to judge her against standards expected of an experienced worker and for that reason exempted her from selection for lay off.

Ryanair said three of the lowest-scoring staff — two Poles and one Irish — were let go. It argued that, as Ms Spyra had worked with Ryanair for a number of years, “it was reasonable to expect that her performance would enable her to score will under the criteria set out in the scheme”.

“However she did not do so and she emerged as the lowest scoring fully trained worker under the scheme.”

Ryanair said performance at work was the only factor taken into consideration in selecting staff to lay off.

It said 90% of the airline’s staff are non-Irish.

The Labour Court stated that it considered the multi-national make-up of Ryanair’s workforce. It said it further noted “that the outcome of the assessment conducted ranked foreign national workers in four of the top five positions. The court finds that those figures do not indicate an inherent adverse bias in the design or conduct of exercise against non-Irish workers. Neither does it disclose or suggest a bias against non-Irish workers in the outcome of the exercise.”

In its ruling, it found Ms Spyra’s claim was not well founded and an equality tribunal decision to reject her claim was affirmed.