Europe’s largest budget carrier has announced that staff have been placed on “protective notice”
Ryanair has announced that it plans to cut its fleet in Dublin from 30 planes to 24 for the winter and has issued letters of “protective notice” to around 300 staff.
The aircraft will be transferred to the airlines Polish charter service, Ryanair Sun.
More than 100 pilots and 200 cabin crew have been served 90 days notice that they could be made redundant on 28 October.
Ryanair said this was “partly as a result of recent rolling strikes by Irish pilots, which has had a negative effect on high fare bookings and forward air fares as consumer confidence in the reliability of our Irish flight schedules has been disturbed.
Dublin-based pilots staged a third strike yesterday, forcing Ryanair to cancel 16 flights. 2,500 passengers were affected.
Pilots say that there is no transparent system for annual leave or promotion, and would like the creation of a fair system so that they could understand the reasoning behind base transfers.
Cabin crew based in in Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Italy have downed tools for today and tomorrow. This has led to the cancellation of 600 flights, affecting 100,000 passengers.
Some staff served notice may be transferred to Poland, or other bases, to minimise redundancies.
The term “protective notice” has no basis in Irish law, although it is widely used to inform employees that they may be made redundant without a change in circumstances.
Ryanair also published redacted payslips online in an effort to pressure workers. These show a captain in Ireland earns €195,024 a year. One of their counterparts based in the United Kingdom would earn €219,209 per annum.
Senior cabin crew could earn €45,000 each year, while junior cabin crew would bring home €27,808.
It is not known how accurate this information is.
Peter Bellew, Ryanair COO, said the carrier regretted the decision to reduce capacity in Dublin.
The board has decided to allocate more aircraft to those markets where we are enjoying strong growth (such as Poland),” he said. “And this will result in some aircraft reductions and job cuts in country markets where business has weakened, or forward bookings are being damaged by rolling strikes by Irish pilots.”
Ryanair has invited the pilots’ union Fórsa to a meeting this afternoon. The past week has seen a series of tit-for-tat communications in the press with each side blaming the other for failing to meet for negotiations.
Fórsa has warned that there could be more industrial action by pilots if both sides are unable to get round a table.
On Monday, Ryanair released a quarterly earnings report that showed a fall in profits of 20 per cent to €319m. This was blamed on lower fares, higher oil prices and higher staffing costs.
It is also facing disruption from air traffic control strikes across Europe. RTÉ reports that they have filed a complaint against France over the issue, alongside Aer Lingus owner IAG, EasyJet and Wizz Air.
