Why make pay ing passengers suffer?
Leo urges Ryanair and unions to think of customers
LEO Varadkar has urged Ryanair and union chiefs to think of their suffering passengers who pay staff wages and fund annual shareholder dividends.
The Taoiseach told of his concerns yesterday as the dispute deepened and the airline said it had to cancel 20 flights, affecting 3,500 passengers next Friday.
This came as it announced 90-day protective notices for 100 Dublin-based pilots and 200 cabin crew, threatening the loss of their jobs.
Ryanair is growing increasingly frustrated by union actions and insists its Irish staff are among the highest-paid in the firm.
And while it says the unions need to meet the company, it also said it won’t negotiate with them as long as strikes go on.
On Wednesday, the airline said: ‘Recent rolling strikes by Irish pilots had a negative effect on high-fare bookings and forward air fares.’ And it has admitted that ‘consumer confidence in the reliability of our Irish flight schedules has been disturbed’.
With the strikes threatening travel on the August bank holiday weekend, which starts next Friday, the Taoiseach said: ‘I am very concerned with the escalation in the Ryanair dispute, particularly the impact it’s going to have on holidaymakers and people who spent months saving up for their holidays and who are now perhaps not being able to take their holiday.
‘So I would really ask Ryanair and the unions to think about the people and the customers, the ones that ultimately pay the wages of the pilots and the cabin crew, and who ultimately pay the dividends of the shareholders and keep the board in office. And I would ask that they get around the table, come to an agreement and allow things to return to normal.’
Ryanair’s chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs told RTÉ Radio 1’s Drivetime that the decision to put staff jobs on notice was an ‘escalation that is required to protect our business’. He said strikes were ‘damaging forward booking and yields’, and that they ‘create uncertainty – and uncertainty damages our business’.
He spoke of the company’s responsibility to its shareholders – and also said that its passengers would not be entitled to compensation for loss during the strike. He said: ‘We have a responsibility to our shareholders, to deliver returns and we have a responsibility to our customers to deliver a reliable service.
‘It is [the union] Fórsa who are the ones who are acting recklessly by putting that at risk. They need to call off the strikes. Fórsa want to cause disruption. If they don’t, why don’t they just call off the strike?’ He added: ‘We have a responsibility to our shareholders. We are a business at the end of the day.
‘We are a business that is willing to change and we are a business that wants to sit down with Fórsa and get this negotiation done. But we have responsibility to our shareholders to move aircraft to markets where we are growing rapidly like Poland and away from markets where we have uncertainty and where the business has been damaged. The business has been damaged by the strikes that are been called by Fórsa.’
He added: ‘Ryanair is making good progress with unions in markets across Europe.
‘It is only one market that stands out and that is in Ireland, and a small minority of pilots who are just determined to go on strike regardless of what we say or do.’
Asked about compensation for passengers affected, he said: ‘Compensation does not apply if this is outside of our control and the strikes are not within our control.’
‘Compensation does not apply’