Aer Lingus talks over strike action adjourned

Talks between Aer Lingus and the trade union Impact aimed at averting potential industrial action over plans by the airline to close its cabin crew base at Shannon Airport will resume tomorrow.

Cabin crew at Aer Lingus last week voted in favour of industrial action, up to and including strike action, in protest at the planned closure of the Shannon facility and in relation to roster arrangements.

The Labour Relations Commission intervened in the dispute last Friday and talks were also held on Saturday.

Aer Lingus has said that it had originally planned to expand the Shannon base to facilitate an increase in its trans-Atlantic services. Initially, the airline had wanted to use its own cabin crew to work on leased aircraft which would be operating the new services. However it said it could not reach agreement with Impact on the staffing levels for cabin crew to apply on the leased aircraft operating the new services.

The airline later said it would effectively out-source cabin crew arrangements for the new trans-Atlantic services to operate from Shannon, some of which are due to commmence in January..

Separately the oversight body for the Haddington Road agreement on pay and productivity in the public service will today hear complaints from unions that health service management has breached the accord.

Last week the HSE said it was to withdraw arrangements which allow staff to continue to work the shorter working week that applied prior to the introduction of the Haddington Road agreement in return for a reduction in salary.

The HSE also said it was to put in place a new targeted voluntary redundancy scheme in the health service from 1 January 2014.

The HSE said that the concession of allowing staff to work the shorter pre-Haddington Road hours was no longer viable and that it would be withdrawn from the beginning of January.

Health service unions last week sought a meting of the Haddington Road oversight group on what they described as a direct breach of the deal by the HSE. The unions also said they would advise their collective membership that they are not required to co-operate with the instruction from the HSE.

The trade union Siptu also sought an urgent meting over the redundancy programme and asked what was meant by a targeted scheme.