Spanish supreme court tells dismissed Ryanair employee to take case to Ireland

A former Ryanair employee who was sacked for eating an in-flight sandwich without paying for it or asking permission has been told he cannot contest the dismissal in the Spanish courts.

The air steward, named by Spanish media as Juan Francisco MM, lost his job after he ate a sandwich from the on-board menu of a Ryanair aircraft during a flight in December 2010. According to the airline’s regulations, staff must ask a superior and pay before consuming food prepared for customers.

Unfair dismissal
A Ryanair ham-and-cheese sandwich costs €5.50, according to the airline's in-flight magazine.

The dismissed steward, who is from Spain and has a home in Madrid, was working as a cabin assistant based in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, when he was dismissed. He had been earning€20,700 before tax on a temporary contract.

He brought a claim of unfair dismissal against Ryanair and Dublin-based contractor Workforce International, which provides the airline with staff.

The former steward took the case before the Spanish justice system, on the grounds of his nationality and the fact Ryanair operates in Spain and has offices in Madrid’s Barajas airport. A Madrid provincial court initially accepted the case. However, the Spanish Supreme Court has now ruled the plaintiff must instead take it to Ireland, where the airline’s main headquarters are and under who labour laws he was hired, or to Norway.

“The resolution does not refer to whether or not the firing was correct or not,” said the Supreme Court in a statement, “but rather to whether the Spanish courts have the jurisdiction to handle a claim of unfair dismissal by a worker whose home is in Spain and whose regular residence is in Oslo, and when the defendant’s employers are based in another EU country [Ireland]\.”

Last year, a court in France fined Ryanair more than €8 million, having ruled the company had violated local labour regulations in hiring 120 staff in its Marseille base on Irish contracts.

The company said it would appeal against the ruling, insisting French laws clashed with European Union laws on this issue.

Withdraw charity calendar
In December, the airline had a run-in with Spanish justice authorities, when a judge in Malaga told Ryanair to withdraw a charity calendar featuring the company's air stewardesses dressed in bikinis.

A consumer group had complained that the product was sexist.

The judge said that although the calendar clearly generated funds for a cancer charity, “it is obvious that it is disguising a marketing campaign of the company, which uses women’s bodies to sell tickets, with stewardesses adopting poses of sexual invitation, in what is a discriminatory treatment of women”.