More than 1,000 Aer Lingus cabin crew are to picket the State's three main airports today in a strike over pay and productivity.However, disruption to services is expected to be limited.
Aer Lingus did not source any additional aircraft yesterday, but has cancelled only 19 of its 200-odd flights. Affected passengers are to be accommodated on other flights.
Cabin crew's union, IMPACT, says pickets will be placed at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports from 8.30 a.m.
Aer Lingus declined to say how much it was spending on planes and crew being hired for the day to maintain services. IMPACT said the company was spending huge amounts of money hiring aircraft, which could be better spent on resolving the dispute. It estimated the cost of hiring a plane and crew at €35,000.
It is understood the company has sourced about 20 aircraft for today's operations. An Aer Lingus spokesman, however, said he did not accept the union's estimate on the cost. "It depends on the type of aircraft, how long you're hiring it for, how many flights it will do and other issues. It's something that's negotiated, there isn't just a figure you can pick.
"It is going to cost us," he added. "We don't like having to spend money in this way, but we gave an absolute commitment to our customers that we would maintain services."
A further one-day strike is planned by cabin crew on Monday, when thousands of passengers will be travelling at the end of the bank holiday weekend.
If a recommendation due from the Labour Court is issued before then, the union says it will hold an emergency meeting of its cabin crew committee to decide its response. One option would be to call off the strike and ballot members on the new recommendation, but union officials declined to speculate on the likelihood of this.
The dispute is over the extent of work practice changes cabin crew must implement in return for an overdue pay increase of four per cent. Ms Christina Carney of IMPACT said the concessions being sought by the company would result in cabin crew losing more money than they would gain from the pay rise.
Staff are currently paid €27 each time they achieved shorter "turnaround times" for planes at airports. They would lose that and gain a rise of about €10 a week after tax.
Aer Lingus, however, said the crew qualified for the €27 on only rare occasions. Last year, the total paid by the company under this provision was €1,700 - or about €1.70 in the entire year for each crew member.
Ms Carney also drew the union into conflict with the chairman of the Labour Court, Mr Finbarr Flood, over a request that the strike be postponed pending the court's recommendation.
Asked why the union had refused the request, Ms Carney said it had not come from the court itself, but was in fact a request from the company which had been "passed on" by the Labour Court.
Mr Flood told The Irish Times this was not the case. The request to delay the strike to give the court time to craft a recommendation had been made by the court itself. "That was made quite clear to the union, but having considered the request, they came back and said that could not postpone the strike."