Aer Lingus cabin crew may set up their own union if the dispute over whether they can leave SIPTU to join IMPACT is not resolved quickly.
The chairwoman of the dissident SIPTU members who wish to join IMPACT, Ms Nora O'Reilly, says she intends writing to the latter union informing it that she has application forms from the required 80 per cent of SIPTU members needed to switch unions.
Yesterday the president of SIPTU, Mr Des Geraghty, IMPACT's general secretary, Mr Peter McLoone, and the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Peter Cassells, met Aer Lingus at the company's request. Senior management expressed concern that a major inter-union dispute could cause serious problems for the company.
The union side gave the company a report back on the ICTU hearing last Thursday into the cabin crews' transfer application. This was part of an investigation of a complaint by SIPTU against IMPACT for "poaching" members.
Ms O'Reilly, who was not notified of the meeting, said yesterday: "This is not a debate we're prepared to get involved in between the two unions. Our preference obviously is to be in IMPACT; if that option is not available we will have to switch to `plan B', and that means either joining another union or going out on our own."
Any new union has to register with the Registrar of Friendly Societies, lodge £20,000 in a bank and recruit 1,000 members to acquire a negotiating licence.
With more than 1,300 cabin crew signed up to transfer from SIPTU to IMPACT, the dissidents would have no difficulty meeting these requirements.
Ms O'Reilly said yesterday she had been 23 years with SIPTU and was "surely entitled to take my business elsewhere if I am dissatisfied with the service I am getting. We are constantly being told we have to compete in the marketplace with the Ryanairs of this world and I find it fascinating in a democracy that I can't choose which union represents me".
She said it was a growing perception that the relationship between SIPTU and Aer Lingus was getting too cosy which led to the alienation of cabin crew. She traces its roots to the Cahill plan of the mid-1990s which saw crews having to accept an 18-day reduction in leave days and the loss of "route groups". These allowed long-service cabin crew to work on routes that suited them best.
Ms O'Reilly claims that management is exploiting the dispute over trade union membership to operate even heavier duty rosters than usual. A company spokesman said that there may have been isolated incidents of staff being given extra rosters but this was inevitable with 1,700 staff involved and rapidly expanding services.
SIPTU is strongly resisting the loss of so many members and rejects the claim it has not defended cabin crew interests. Between 1993 and 1995, it faced the choice of agreeing to serious cutbacks in members' working conditions or seeing Aer Lingus face closure. It wants cabin crew to agree to an inquiry into its stewardship to see if it could have done better.
However, Ms O'Reilly says cabin crews' priority is "not what went wrong in our relationship with SIPTU but getting representation with management over the way rosters are being abused. It's a bit like saying to a battered wife the first priority is finding out why your husband is beating you, rather than finding her safe accommodation."
She says getting cabin crew to join a union at all is not easy. They are a transient and poorly paid workforce. Full-time staff earn between £10,000 and £18,000 a year, part-time contract staff are only guaranteed £5,000 a year. She says the £4.40p fortnightly union deduction for SIPTU can seem very poor value.