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DAMIEN LANE
The pay demands of Aer Lingus pilots are extortionate – it’s time they copped on and re-entered the real world
A 23.8 per cent pay award would add more than €24,000 to the pay of the lowest-ranking pilot
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THAT’S the summer ruined for tens of thousands of holidaymakers, and it’s got nothing to do with the foul weather.
If you’ve booked a sunshine break and plan to fly Aer Lingus in the near future, you’re goosed, because pilots there are about to begin an indefinite work to rule in a dispute with bosses over pay.
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Every worker is entitled to negotiate for better pay. And unions are well within their rights to argue for better dough and enhanced working conditions on behalf of their members.
But there’s fair and then, I think, there’s taking the p***.
IALPA, the union representing pilots at Aer Lingus, has demanded a 23.8 per cent pay rise (inflation is currently hovering at just TWO per cent) and are refusing to budge.
Their members earn an average base salary of €80,000 a year, which when you add bonuses, shares, stocks and commission probably bumps it up to about €100,000 a year for some, a tidy sum to most (especially those who sweat it out to bring home the average industrial wage of about €44,000 a year).
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What Aer Lingus pilots currently earn, say their union, is simply not enough. Oh yeah?
They say they haven’t had a pay increase since 2019, and have dug their heels in to get the award they say they’re entitled to.
Pilots’ union president Captain Mark Tighe said: “We are in this position because management have failed to provide us with a meaningful offer on pay that accounts for inflation and the sacrifices made by pilots to save Aer Lingus during the pandemic.”
Sacrifices made during the pandemic!! What are you talking about?
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Tone deaf
Nurses risked their lives on the frontlines caring for the seriously ill and the dying without demanding a huge pay rise afterwards.
Indeed, all they got from their employers (the State) was a pat on the back and a €1,000 tax-free bonus for their heroic efforts.
Talk about IALPA being tone deaf.
Bosses at Aer Lingus have said the pilots’ 23.8 per cent pay demand is “exorbitant, outrageous and untenable”. Most people would agree.
Massive pay rises
A 23.8 per cent pay award would add more than €24,000 to the pay of the lowest-ranking pilot.
A mid-career captain is on €177,365 a year at the moment. He or she would walk away with an extra €42,000 if the union got its way.
An Aer Lingus captain with 20 years’ experience currently banks €239,000 a year. Their pay would rise by more than €55,000.
These sums are really beyond the comprehension of most hardworking people, who have been to the pin of their collar for the last two years.
Magic money tree
Most of us struggle to make ends meet. Pilots don’t.
Their demands, such as they are, exist in a parallel universe where the magic money tree sprouts cash in abundance. A land of make-believe. Fanciful stuff.
Aer Lingus is fighting the pilots all the way on this. Their logic is simple: To give in to the pilots would be financially ruinous.
With that in mind, the company has offered through the Labour Court a pay increase of 9.25 per cent (a reasonable offer and still more than four times the rate of inflation). But the pilots’ union has rejected every offer.
Full strike not ruled out
Despite going through an independent pay tribunal, full conciliation hearings before the Workplace Relations Commission and a hearing before the Labour Court, which awarded them the 9.25 per cent pay rise, IALPA has resorted to a work to rule, with full strike action not ruled out.
Here’s the crux: the pilots’ union appears to have thumbed its nose at the outcome of all three labour relations procedures, which offered a favourable pay deal any other union would have been obliged to accept.
How were IALPA given the green light to institute industrial action after THREE separate conciliation processes?
This is not the norm. Would bin men or hospital porters have been allowed to mount strike action had they sat down with all the industrial relations players and been offered a reasonable pay rise more than four times the rate of inflation? You know the answer to that.
Ordinary people stuck
But we are where we are. And stuck in the middle is the ordinary man
and woman, effectively being held to ransom.
From next Wednesday the pilots will start their indefinite work to rule.
They’ll refuse to work overtime, or perform any out-of-hours duties. They will also refuse to log on to online Aer Lingus portals or answer work phone calls outside of work hours.
An airline cannot function in those circumstances, and for the tens of thousands of people who’ve booked a flight with the national airline in the coming weeks and months, chaos, confusion and fear will reign.
It’s time the pilots’ union copped on and re-entered the real world.
GREEN GIG WILL BE A TOUGH ONE
WHATEVER your opinion of the Green Party’s former leader Eamon Ryan, who stepped down this week, he was a man of principle.
And he wasn’t afraid to be honest, a trait usually alien to politicians.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan announces he's stepping down in shock move-
So his departure from politics spells bad news for the Greens.
As well as being one of politics’ good eggs, Ryan had a charisma and a charm that will be hard to replace.
In their four-and-a-half years in power alongside Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the Greens, under Ryan, have managed to do quite a lot.
They developed thousands of kilometres of greenways across the country. They built cycle paths everywhere they could. They pumped money into buses and trains and delivered on a vision of making our cities and towns more liveable.
They gave concrete change to people’s everyday lives.
Which is why their mauling by the electorate at the recent European and local elections is a mystery.
Easy to blame the smallest party in Government for life’s ills, I suppose.
Eamon Ryan has probably had enough after more than 20 years in politics. And I wish him all the best as he cycles off.
His replacement is a two-way fight between Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman and Minister of State Pippa Hackett.
Whoever gets it will have a tough job winning back that Green vote.
VLAD AND KIM'S BIG MEET
IT would be almost impossible to conjure up two more odious characters than Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
The Russian tyrant travelled this week to meet his pudgy North Korean counterpart in Pyongyang, where the pair cooked up a mutual defence agreement, over copious quantities of brandy and caviar no doubt.
North Korea has proved very useful to heavily-sanctioned Russia since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Kim has provided Russia with more than 11,000 shipping containers full of shells, which the Russian army has used to flatten much of Ukraine.
The pair’s meeting only strengthens Russia’s hand and should worry us all.
ALL GREAT BUT FOR ENGLAND
THE Euros thus far have been helter-skelter exciting.
Save for the England v Serbia game, a thoroughly drab affair (blame boring Gareth Southgate), every match has been glorious to watch.
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The best game to date was the battle in the rain between debutants Georgia and Turkey.
Fans fought in the stands beforehand. There is no love lost between the geographical neighbours, so it wasn’t a surprise to see fisticuffs.
But those ugly scenes, soon brought under control by riot police, presaged a marvellous tussle on the pitch.
It was more like a basketball match than football. You attack, we attack, and we keep attacking until there is nothing left to give.
Both sides left everything on the park. And we all lapped it up, like a glorious 99 at the end of a four-hour walk in the sunshine.
The Turks emerged victorious but the valiant Georgians won a place in all our hearts. They’ll give any team a proper game.
Then there was Austria, who threw everything they had at the impressive French and just came up short, thanks to a jammy own goal.
Former Man United manager Ralf Rangnick played a crazy attacking 3-3-4 formation and it nearly paid off.
France knew it had been in a ding-dong battle afterwards. Star Kylian Mbappe will wear a mask for the rest of the tournament after breaking his nose.
Romania were remarkable too, putting the fancied Ukrainians to the sword. Slovakia outwitted the Belgians.
It’s anyone’s guess who wins this thing come July 12.
But after watching dismal England under clueless Southgate, it’s safe to say it won’t be them.
I’ve cursed it, haven’t I?
GERMANY LOSING IT
THE Germans are universally renowned for their efficiency, but by all accounts that seems no longer to be the case.
There were reports of monster queues to get public transport back into town after numerous Euros games.
England fans stranded in Gelsenkirchen for hours after Euro 2024 win over Serbia as they slam 'absolute disgrace'
Some England fans complained of waiting more than two hours to get back to their hotels after the game with Serbia last Sunday night.
Which is very un-German.
I lived in Frankfurt back in the late-1980s and public transport was unbelievably good. Undergrounds, fast trains and trams went everywhere and came every couple of minutes.
I can’t contemplate how it’s gotten worse in the intervening years.
An ageing network and underinvestment seem to be the culprits.
TAYLOR'S ROOTS SHOW GREEN
MORE than 31.5million Americans claim Irish ancestry, so it was no surprise to learn the world’s Queen of Pop, Taylor Swift is... Irish.
Her forebears left Derry for Philadelphia in 1836.
Taylor’s lineage comes from the youngest daughter of that emigrant Irish couple, her great-great-grandmother Mary.
When Trump storms to the White House in November, Taylor can always grab her Irish passport and come live here.
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