Final stage of Aer Lingus's seven-year legal case

A seven-year legal battle by former workers with Team Aer Lingus who want to be treated on the same basis as comparable Aer Lingus staff who remained with the national airline has entered its final stage before the Supreme Court.

The five-judge court yesterday began hearing an appeal by a number of former Team workers against a High Court decision limiting to four years the period of time for which, from their return to Aer Lingus in 1998 following the collapse of Team and its sale to FLS, the workers were either entitled to be put on maintenance work or given its monetary value.

The workers say that, when they returned to Aer Lingus, they should have been given work equivalent to the work they did when they left and were also entitled to the same pay and conditions of employment as their Aer Lingus peers who had not left to go to Team.

Some of the workers were not reinstated as engineers and are instead working in areas such as baggage handling.

In an October 2002 judgment, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns ruled that the plaintiffs who returned to work with Aer Lingus in 1998 from Team were entitled to be paid at the same level as engineers who did not go to Team.

He later ruled that the workers, on their return to Aer Lingus in 1998, were entitled to be put on maintenance work or to be given its monetary value for such "reasonable" time as might be implied from the assurances given to them in a letter from the company at the time of their departure to Team.

He decided in April 2003 that "reasonable" time was the date from when they returned to Aer Lingus in 1998 until his October 2002 judgment - a four year period.

Presenting the workers' appeal yesterday, Mr John Rogers SC said the main subject of the appeal was the "reasonable period" the trial judge had relied upon. He said the Aer Lingus workers who had transferred to Team did so after negotiations in 1989 and 1990 which involved representations and assurances to the workers from management. It was his side's case that those representations and assurances were contractually binding.

Mr Rogers submitted that letters and other documents from Aer Lingus showed the plaintiffs were entitled to consider themselves as continuing to be Aer Lingus employees even though they were in Team. He said one letter of April 30th, 1990 from John O'Neill, then general manager of Aer Lingus, stated that all those who went to Team would remain as Aer Lingus employees and would retire as Aer Lingus employees.

The workers accepted they could do nothing much about redundancy, the question for the court to decide was whether the contractual commitments they were given had an enduring effect, counsel said. He contended they had such an effect.

The hearing continues today.