Aer Lingus cabin crew accept €97m cost-saving plan

CABIN CREW at Aer Lingus voted yesterday to accept the terms of a controversial €97 million cost-saving plan.

This reversed the result of a previous vote by the crew, and means all five union groups at the airline have now accepted the plan, which is aimed at shaving 7.5 per cent off Aer Lingus’s cost base.

The acceptance by Impact cabin crew averts the threat of 230 compulsory redundancies. It also removes any possibility of industrial action by staff.

Impact said 828 staff voted on the ballot, with 92 per cent accepting and 8 per cent rejecting the proposal.

In the previous ballot cabin crew had rejected the proposals by a margin of two-to-one in spite of a recommendation from Impact.

That rejection resulted in Aer Lingus threatening to make all 1,200 cabin crew redundant with a view to rehiring all bar 230 on lesser terms and conditions. The 230 staff would have received statutory redundancy.

Aer Lingus said it would now proceed with the implementation of the so-called Greenfield plan, which will result in about 670 redundancies, pay cuts across the board and changes in work practices.

Staff were told this week that the pay cuts, which will be effective from March 1st, will be implemented in the next payroll run.

Aer Lingus and cabin crew are to return to the Labour Relations Commission next week for binding arbitration to clarify the number of flight hours to be worked by cabin crew each year. Aer Lingus is seeking a figure of 850 hours’ flight time.

In a statement, Aer Lingus said it appreciated the “overwhelming result” of the second ballot.

The airline described the vote as a “major step towards full delivery of the identified savings from cabin crew” under its cost-reduction programme.

“The company will now work with Impact to implement the productivity targets as set out in the Greenfield agreement.”

Impact welcomed the fact that the ballot result was achieved by a joint negotiation process. “Furthermore, the agreement was achieved without any recourse to, or threat of, industrial action at any stage of the negotiations.”

The Impact cabin crew voted on the same proposals that were put to them in the original ballot.

Impact said “extensive bilateral discussions” that took place on March 19th at the LRC gave the cabin crew negotiating team “deeper clarification in a number of areas”.

This enabled the branch to put the Aer Lingus cost-saving proposals of February 15th to another ballot of its members.

A spokesman for Impact said the clarifications related to temporary crew that were let go last year by Aer Lingus and some “technical points on rostering”.

The union committee said the past few months had been a difficult time for cabin crew as they faced significant cost savings barely a year following similar proposals valued at €15 million.

The cabin crew branch committee said it hoped the agreement would mark the start of a new relationship with management based on mutual respect.

Aer Lingus will publish its full-year 2009 results on Tuesday and guide on the outlook for 2010.

On March 10th, Aer Lingus said it made an €81 million operating loss in 2009.