Aer Lingus to reassure staff after memo leaking

Aer Lingus will today reassure staff over the leaked memo which outlined “tactics” to force voluntary redundancies as part of a cost-cutting plan.

The document, which came from a provisional business strategy prepared by the national airline in 2004, was today dismissed by management as a discussion paper which was never implemented.

The memo said 200 supervisors would be told they had no future with the firm, and cabin crew may be asked to wear “tacky” jump-suits and T-shirts.

Workers with families would be given more difficult shift patterns, and surplus pilots would have to undertake tedious training modules.

But Aer Lingus chairman John Sharman insisted the 12-point proposals were never implemented to his knowledge, and added that he would write to staff today to clarify the situation.

“This is being described as a plan, but it never was. At no stage would these tactics have been authorised by me,” he said.

Mr Sharman said the memo was one of several documents circulated among a small number of people while the company drew up a new business plan during 2004.

“It was a discussion document designed to bring comment internally within the management at the time whether a voluntary severance scheme would be successful. It did not constitute a plan to get rid of people,” he added.

SIPTU national industrial secretary Michael Halpenny said: “We had warned our members that Aer Lingus would put all sorts of psychological tactics to put pressure on them to take redundancies.”

The so-called “push” factors listed in the memo also included scrapping a bus service from Dublin Airport car park for cabin crew working unsociable shifts.