Aer Lingus dispute over duty rosters is a high-stakes game

Holiday season in Ireland: must be a threat of strike action at our beloved national airline.

The decision by cabin crew to play hardball with management in an effort to get their duty rosters more closely aligned with those of pilots means disruption for passengers on a critical bank holiday now seems certain. Coinciding as it does with the end of the secondary school year for those classes not doing State exams, next Friday is one of the busier days on the Irish airline schedule. As many as 28,000 people were expected to travel with Aer Lingus on Friday.

Depressingly, this is not the first such disruptive action at the airline. While previous threats are often dropped in frenzied last-minute negotiations, inevitably the damage to the airline’s reputation is done.

This time, airline sources say the price is already set to exceed €6 million and may yet cost the airline as much as €10 million in lost revenue.

That’s before taking account of the threat of two further days of action , and at a company that most recently reported an operating loss before exceptionals of close to €50 million for the first three months of the year.

And all this against a backdrop of an ongoing dispute over a major hole in the airline’s pension fund that threatens to substantially undermine retirement income for airline staff and their colleagues in the DAA.

The fact staff are so bullish in their determination to strike might say something for the perceived easing of the State’s parlous financial position: the company’s determination to concede no ground can be attributed either to its ongoing concern that Aer Lingus’s cost base remains a long way from sustainable, or to mounting concern about the persistent mutinous undercurrent at the airline, or both.

Taking a further €10 million and counting out of your employer’s income at a time you’re looking to fill a hole in your pension fund seems decidedly misguided.

With neither side showing much evidence of reason, the bottom line is that the longer-term future Aer Lingus might be at risk in this high-stakes game.