250 more flights cancelled over Ryanair strikes
Now workers in five countries are part of Irish action
RYANAIR has been forced to cancel 250 more flights after their Germany-based pilots joined the industrial action that has dogged the airline for the past few weeks.
The action, which began in Ireland and has affected hundreds of thousands of passengerd has now spread to four more countries.
The pilots in Germany yesterday voted to join a 24-hour strike tomorrow in a row over pay and working conditions.
Meanwhile, their colleagues in the Netherlands also called for a strike tomorrow after the airline said it was going to court yesterday to try to stop the Dutch pilots striking over the summer.
The pilots’ German union, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), will join similar action in Ireland, Belgium and Sweden by staging 24hour strike action affecting thousands of passengers at the peak of the holiday travel season.
Ryanair branded the strike ‘unnecessary’, claiming pilots were earning up to €190,000 per annum. The airline has cancelled 20 of its scheduled 300 flights to and from Ireland tomorrow ahead of a planned fifth day of strike action by Irish-based pilots. The German VC union said ‘no improved offer has been submitted from Dublin’. It added: ‘Ryanair management confined itself to repeating and summarising in a letter the terms that they considered to be significant.’
VC president Martin Locher said in a statement: ‘Ryanair categorically ruled out any increase in staff pay in the negotiations.
‘At the same time, Ryanair has never shown where there is leeway to find solutions. Ryanair alone is responsible for the escalation that has now occurred,’ it said.
VC has apologised to affected passengers, cabin crew and ground crew and said it wanted an agreement with comparable conditions to those at Ryanair’s competitors.
Meanwhile, Ryanair said in a statement: ‘Customers affected by these unnecessary cancellations will be contacted by email and SMS text message this afternoon (August 8) before 3pm and advised of their options of a refund, free move on to the next available flight or reroute.
‘Flight operations are scheduled to resume normal services on Saturday 11 August 2018.’
Ryanair’s chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs added: ‘We regret the decision of the VC to go ahead with this unnecessary strike action given that we sent through a revised proposal on a Collective Labour Agreement (CLA) last Friday and stated our intention to work towards achieving a CLA together. We also invited VC to meet us on Tuesday (August 7) but they did not respond to this invitation.
‘Our pilots in Germany enjoy excellent working conditions. They are paid up to €190,000 per annum and, as well as additional benefits, they received a 20% pay increase at the start of this year. Ryanair pilots earn at least 30% more than Eurowings and 20% more than Norwegian pilots.
‘We asked VC to provide us with at least seven days’ notice of any planned strike action so that we could notify our customers of cancelled flights in advance and offer them alternative flights or refunds, but they have refused to do this and instead call an unnecessary strike in Germany in just two days’ time.
‘We again call on the VC to remove the threat of an unjustified and unnecessary strike, to commit to providing reasonable (seven days) notice of strike action and to accept our invitations to meet for meaningful negotiations on a CLA.
‘Ryanair is now forced to cancel 250 flights of over 2,400 flights scheduled to operate on Friday 10 August,’ the statement said.
‘Ryanair alone is responsible’ ‘Our pilots enjoy excellent conditions’