The very personal battle that means this Ryanair strike could lurch from a skirmish into a war

MY 19-year-old daughter had an anxious day yesterday, waiting for an email from Ryanair. She was among the tens of thousands of customers due to fly with the airline from Ireland tomorrow but who were wondering if they would get to their destinations as planned.

It is to be the first leg of her summer inter-railing across the EU, along with other students who have just finished their first year in university.

So my interest in tomorrow’s strike by pilots – and in the disruption to Ryanair services that it will cause – is personal as well as professional, and is sympathetic to those who are the victims of the row for which they are not responsible.

I realise how upsetting the uncertainty of recent days has been to the many people who have organised holidays, connections to other flights, attendance at weddings or work meetings and who may find it very hard to get to where they need to be at the right time if their Ryanair flight does not depart as planned. My daughter worked hard in a part-time job throughout the year to finance her trip; she couldn’t afford to book an additional flight for today as an insurance policy and didn’t want to ask me for the money either.

She knows I’ve just finished writing a biography of Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary – which will be published at the end of September – so she expected me to have the answers as to whether she would be able to fly or not.

I didn’t, but fortunately she discovered yesterday afternoon that Ryanair is promising to fulfil all of its 260 flights to continental Europe, believing it has enough people available to combat the effects of a strike by less than 100 staff pilots. So she’s sorted.

Unfortunately, passengers on up to 30 flights from Ireland to the UK discovered that their flights have been cancelled, giving them little time to organise alternatives, even if Ryanair is required to pay them compensation. That’s nearly 6,000 people: no small number.

All of these developments resulted in an interesting conversation with her on the industrial relations dispute at Ryanair. It is fair to say that she was a bit baffled to hear that the strike called by the pilots followed a recent pay rise of €20,000 per annum and that those who threatened her holiday were, in part at least, causing a strike about little more than their own holiday arrangements.

That it should come to this was remarkable but there’s an old cliché that is trotted out often, which goes along the lines of: ‘It’s not personal, it’s business.’

However, that doesn’t necessarily apply at Ryanair, which is different to most other companies in how it does its business. The reason many Ryanair passengers will be inconvenienced tomorrow is largely due to the personal animosity between O’Leary and representatives of the pilots who are members of the Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association (Ialpa). The animosity is mutual. The personal has become interwoven with the business.

It is notable, for example, that Ryanair, since it announced last December that it would recognise the right of unions to negotiate on behalf of employees, has managed to swiftly strike deals with Balpa (the British equivalent) and an Italian union representing workers.

Just as significantly, it has done a deal with Unite, arguably the most militant of the British trade unions, to represent cabin crew in the UK. But the Irish pilots are a different matter.

Provocative

O’Leary will not be present at the meeting between the company and unions that finally takes place at Dublin Airport this morning, but even in the heatwave conditions the temperature in the room is likely to be very cold.

This row is not about unfair pay. It is about conditions, such as seniority, annual leave and base transfers. In a Ryanair statement yesterday, that could be described as angry and ran the risk of being regarded by the unions as deliberately provocative, the airline painted a picture of well-looked-after pilots.

It said that its pilots have already secured a 20% pay increase, earn up to €200,000 a year, work five days on, followed by four off (which it says is a double bank holiday weekend at the end of every week), and enjoy rapid promotions and unmatched job security.

Sympathy for those strikers may be short-lived. It’s not exactly exploitation.

It’s estimated that 80% of the labour costs on each flight are in the cockpit; the cabin crew get paid a pittance by comparison. If the public familiarises itself with those claims – and believes them to be accurate – sympathy for pilots who strike to make things better for themselves may be limited. It won’t help them either if their union is accused of rejecting 21 separate invitations to meet Ryanair to negotiate.

Ryanair’s problem is that public perception of who’s right and wrong doesn’t necessarily matter for much. All they want is the flights they’ve paid for.

Pay alone doesn’t keep the pilots happy; they want the type of add-ons that drive O’Leary mad if they add to the costs of doing business and reducing the flexibility he enjoys to move them where he wants when he wants to maximise his profits. He has conceded the rights of unions to represent staff but there are limits to what he will give them. This isn’t just because it will affect Ryanair profits if he does so. It is also because Ryanair will be seen by investors as no different to any other airline if it loses its cost advantage by making regular excessive financial concessions to its staff. That is already pulling down its share price.

For those reasons, Ryanair was always likely to go to great lengths to ‘take’ tomorrow’s strike by refusing to give in to demands it labelled as ‘blackmail’ – and then try to ‘break’ that strike by cancelling as few flights as is possible.

That’s mixed news for customers of and investors at Ryanair. The airline has the resources to minimise disruption – especially as so many of its pilots and cabin crew are contractors who must turn up for work or risk losing their positions – but the pilots still have enough capacity to cause enough of it to be an issue.

Ryanair has published a letter, sent to the Dublin Airport Authority last month and signed by a prominent Aer Lingus pilot at Ialpa who has been a regular thorn in its side, which outlined plans for a series of strikes at the airport this month and next. O’Leary has a long-running streak of paranoia about the actions of unions at competitor companies.

‘It is unacceptable that competitor airline pilots are actively organising strikes by Ryanair’s pilots when these airlines will be the direct beneficiaries of any such disruption,’ Ryanair claimed yesterday. ‘These coordinated strike threats are designed to cause unnecessary disruption to customers and damage Ryanair’s low-fare model, for the benefit of high-fare competitor airlines in Ireland and Germany.’

In other words, the irritation caused to customers this week may be repeated on a number of occasions over the summer. My daughter and many other customers may get out of Ireland tomorrow, but they’ll be checking anxiously to see if the next threatened strike – which is likely – falls on the day they want to come back.