Yahoo Finance Ryanair staff in France accuse airline of 'redundancy blackmail'
French flight crew have accused Ryanair of blackmailing them into taking pay cuts or losing their jobs.
The Irish airline, which has warned it may cut up to 3,000 jobs in Europe, told staff in France it was imposing 20% salary cuts for flight crew and 10% for attendants. Those who are already on legal minimum wages will have their hours reduced.
Staff unions have accused the company of “redundancy blackmail” and acting like cowboys.
“France isn’t the wild west,” Damien Mourgues, a cabin crew union representative, told AFP.
According to confidential documents seen by French media, Ryanair wrote to staff proposing wage cuts take effect from 1 July 2020. The lower wages would be progressively increased over the five years so flight crew would be paid their full current salaries by July 2025. The loss of salary works out at an average 12% over five years for the pilots. Ryanair also proposed to pay new pilots and co-pilots the lower wages.
The Syndicat National des Pilots de Ligne said it had been given a maximum of five days to respond to the ultimatum. If not, it said the company warned it would have “no choice” but to lay off 29% of its pilots and 27% of co-pilots in France.
The airline also wrote to cabin crew representatives proposing a 10% salary cut during the same five-year period and reducing their paid working time from 2,000 hours a year to 1,600 hours, meaning a loss of €308 (£274) a month for those earning €1,539 a month.
The flight attendants’ union, SNPNC-FO, said pay cuts would take cabin crew below the minimum wage and demanded “explanations to justify the planned loss of income” but said Ryanair had not responded. SNPNC-FO said it had also been given five days to agree or face having 27 out of 160 France-based cabin staff laid off.
Ryanair has confirmed it would have to lose up to 3,000 jobs and close certain bases in Europe until business recovers from the Covid-19 crisis. The company confirmed the proposed pay cuts and said it was in talks with French unions.
“The measures are reasonable and time limited and aimed at saving as many jobs as possible at a moment when all airlines in Europe are losing jobs to survive this unprecedented crisis,” Ryanair told RTL radio.
In a company statement last month, Ryanair blamed the “expected significant decline” in passenger traffic this year and accused European governments of distorting competition with “selected state aid doping” with €30bn bailout packages for rival airlines.
Fiodor Rilov, a lawyer for SNPNC-FO, said Ryanair’s proposals were “unacceptable”.
“They can’t use the Covid crisis as an excuse to implement significant wage cuts and call into question all the guarantees staff have managed to wrest from a difficult management. Ryanair has considerable reserves,” Rilov said.
He said the union would take legal action to force Ryanair to “respect French law”.
Stéphane Salmon, an SNPNC-FO representative at Ryanair, told AFP the company sent a letter informing him of the proposed cuts on 15 May. He accused the airline of “using the Covid-19 crisis as a pretext to reduce salaries that are already the lowest in the industry”.
Ryanair caused a storm last month when it revealed passengers would have to ask to use the toilets when it restarts flights in July.
Last week, the airline was declared the worst for refunding passengers for flights cancelled during the coronavirus pandemic.
