Ryanair Strike implications re Cancellations NO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS POSTS

Stevek101

Bob24 wrote: »

What is the source for this? And I guess it doesn't tell us much unless we know how many pilots have left in the same period, i.e. was there a net gain or a net loss? (also by hiring new pilots is it meant operational pilots who can start flying shortly, or people who will need training?)

http://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/ryanair-pilots/

Right on the front page. They're operational pilots. Pretty much constant training daily from Shannon, Glasgow and East Midlands.

billy few mates

Turnipman wrote: »

Good to see SIPTU's President Jack O'Connor getting involved!



SIPTU has done such great work for the LUAS, Bus Eireann and Irish Rail workers in the recent past - not to mention Jack's great work for the Irish Labour Party! - so his intervention is just what the Ryanair pilots need at this point!

They certainly don’t need the help of that guy, according to the pilot on this recent LBC interview they’re not actually looking to unionise, all they want is a bit of respect and an end to some of the employment practices like zero hour contracts and out of base expenses which on the face of it doesn’t seem too unreasonable. If both sides could come to an agreement on these issues without involving ‘the unions’ or allowing the company to become unionised then that could be the way forward.
If a highly successful company that makes a billion and a half in revenues every year can’t afford to yield to at least some of these demands then their business model is broken.
http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/furious-ryanair-pilot-calls-lbc-on-working/

View Profile

Stevek101 wrote:

They've hired over 100 pilots in a month with 32 this week alone.

Yeah but how many Captain's?

Inexperienced first officers ain't going to solve their problem.

Bob24

And what we are missing is how many have left during the same period, but that's clearly not an information Ryanair would provide transparently so it is impossible to know if things are actually improving to getting worse.

JCX BXC

View Profile wrote: »

Yeah but how many Captain's?

Inexperienced first officers ain't going to solve their problem.

The thing is, we don't know what exactly there's a shortage of. For all we know, they need more FO's than Captains. (Probably not though).

Stevek101

View Profile wrote: »

Yeah but how many Captain's?

Inexperienced first officers ain't going to solve their problem.

The point is they've taken an extremely pro active approach from the outset. It took a while to sort out the schedule but they managed to do it avoiding anymore cancelleations.

Vueling, Easyjet and Norweigan have all had this problem so its no an isolated incident. IALPA and associated unions are peddling an extreme about of bull**** which will essentially lead to higher fares for the average punter. If you want to travel at an affordable price its best not to listen to them.

Just look at what happened to the fares BFS-LGW. Easyjet have at least tripled them.

devnull

I see the Telegraph are now taking sponsored ads out on Facebook directing people to an article about a new crisis in Ryanair Cabin Crew who are preparing to go on strike and are all going to Easyjet.

Seems strange for a media organisation to pay to promote such an article?

LeChienMefiant

There's more then a hint of anti Irish bigotry about some of the coverage.

View Profile

Well, rumour has it more flights have disappeared from the schedule that weren't on the original list of cancellations.
Unions are getting involved but at the request of the pilots. More for guidance as they don't have the expertise to negotiate with someone like O'Leary. Pilots do not want to have to form a union, however managements lack of cooperation may force this to happen.

Also, fares would not need to increase in order for all FR staff to receive a fair wage. Ryanair profits are massive so share holders would take a slight hit but the company would prosper in the long term.

devnull

View Profile wrote: »

Well, rumour has it more flights have disappeared from the schedule that weren't on the original list of cancellations.

Do you have any source for this?

There was not an original list of cancellations for the winter season, 34 routes were suspended that were listed and the other routes had their schedules amended which may have resulted in change of times, days or a reduction in frequency.

john boye

There may be a sense of bigotry in the reporting but online news outlets know which companies/celebs etc generate the most traffic so they pay to promote articles on them as it's worth the outlay. The tabloids get massive numbers on articles about Lidl etc and often promote articles on them.

devnull

More Drivel in the Daily Express, stating that the era of cheap flights is over and budget airlines could cease to exist soon linking it to the fact that a low cost (!!) airline like Monarch went bust as well as Ryanair's problems.

http://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/863327/cheap-flights-budget-airline-ryanair-monarch

Stevek101

Its great all these rumours with no source to back them up... They've been due to have a mass walk out for weeks now.

In one of the articles its now down to 15 bases that want a unified ERC. That started off with over 30.

Brennus335

View Profile wrote: »

Yeah but how many Captain's?

Inexperienced first officers ain't going to solve their problem.

That's the issue that the media and the sycophants on here don't grasp.
There's a massive pool of inexperienced cadets and FO's willing to sign up, and I won't criticise them for that.

But without experienced Captains and trainers it's equivalent to expecting first year nurses to perform open heart surgery.

billy few mates

I don’t think Ryanair have ever had a problem ‘recruiting’ pilots, the problem they seem to have is ‘retaining’ them. There’s never been a shortage of people wanting to be pilots, and Ryanair is one of a number of airlines that offer them their first break. The problem isn’t so much the numbers of pilots that leave, it’s the experience levels of the pilots who are leaving that could be the problem.
If 100 low hour first officers leave you could probably replace them fairly quickly and easily, if you’re losing your most senior captains, training pilots , TREs/TRIs, LTCs and other specialist roles these would be more difficult to replace as they need a certain level of experience and specialist type courses to hold that grade. Their loss would be quite significant and could also cause a backlog in training of new entrants.
I don’t think anyone has said anything about which level of pilot they’ve been losing recently to contribute to this current situation.

donkey balls

When my mate got his command along with another lad I knew they were told that they would never be based in Ireland,And that FR was more or less a training school.
When you look at the amount of cadets that go through the training each year at 30k a pop, That's some € FR are bringing in as ancillary cash, I saw the letter that was sent out to the lads and it really is a turnaround regarding bases etc.

Bob24

Don’t know how it will go for them, but it now looks like some Ryanair pilots are trying to establish something called another name but which sounds a bit like a pan-European union: http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ryanair-pilots-in-move-to-establish-nonofficial-union-36208255.html

Locker10a

Bob24 wrote: »

Don’t know how it will go for them, but it now looks like some Ryanair pilots are trying to establish something called another name but which sounds a bit like a pan-European union: http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ryanair-pilots-in-move-to-establish-nonofficial-union-36208255.html

Best of luck to them, we have freedom of movement of both business and people in the EU , and now its high time workers in pan European industries now work together too.

Comhrá

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1009/910977-ryanair-pilots/

Bob24

Comhra wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1009/910977-ryanair-pilots/

I think there’s a real risk for Ryanair refusing to engage. I understand why they don’t want to: they only want to talk to local representative structures supervised by the company rather than a global one which attempts to represent all pilot and is self organised, as this would weaken their “divide and conquer” type of management.

But *if* this new structure is considered representative by a significant number of pilots, ignoring it will exacerbate their concerns even more and increase frustration. And since they claim to be well connected with support in every base, they could well have the means to coordination company wide industrial action as an answer to that new frustration.

LeChienMefiant

It makes perfect sense from Ryanair's perspective. They can direct investment where it's necessary to retain staff. It makes no sense to negotiate with a pan european group. I doubt many other empoyers would negotiate or benchmark reward and conditions between regions.

devnull

Bob24 wrote: »

I think there’s a real risk for Ryanair refusing to engage. I understand why they don’t want to: they only want to talk to local representative structures supervised by the company rather than a global one which attempts to represent all pilot and is self organised, as this would weaken their “divide and conquer” type of management.

I don't know any companies that have the whole of their workforce from across different countries negotiating terms and conditions together as one rather than on a country by country basis, since that would be grossly unfair to some workers on the basis that the cost of living is different in each country as well as other legislative requirements.

Locker10a

devnull wrote: »

Bob24 wrote: »

I think there’s a real risk for Ryanair refusing to engage. I understand why they don’t want to: they only want to talk to local representative structures supervised by the company rather than a global one which attempts to represent all pilot and is self organised, as this would weaken their “divide and conquer” type of management.

I don't know any companies that have the whole of their workforce from across different countries negotiating terms and conditions together as one rather than on a country by country basis, since that would be grossly unfair to some workers on the basis that the cost of living is different in each country as well as other legislative requirements.

No one said they'd all have the same pay, but all pilots togeatger will always be stronger than small groups here and there, which is whats currently done and look what that's resulted in

LeChienMefiant

Locker10a wrote: »

No one said they'd all have the same pay, but all pilots togeatger will always be stronger than small groups here and there, which is whats currently done and look what that's resulted in

Exactly. So the pilots in the stronger position would have to act selflessly to refuse to negotiate locally and to support their colleagues.

Bob24

devnull wrote: »

I don't know any companies that have the whole of their workforce from across different countries negotiating terms and conditions together as one rather than on a country by country basis, since that would be grossly unfair to some workers on the basis that the cost of living is different in each country as well as other legislative requirements.

Sure but that’s not what we were talking about.

Pilots creating an informal network to gain more leverage is nothing like them all asking for the same terms regardless of their base country.

The risk for Ryanair is that if pilots lost trust in the local entities set-up (and mostly controlled) by the company and start a more informal but company wide and coordinated structure (via WhatsApp and the likes), there could be a situation where things go out of hands.

I understand what the company refuses to acknowledge such structure or engage with it. But the risk for them is that if staff actually gets too frustrated and is engaged in that informal network, some type of pan-European industrial action erupts and the company won’t even have a communication channel with disgruntled staff to see it coming and address it as quickly as possible.

LeChienMefiant

How does that scenario differ from if it were a formal union? Other than perhaps the fact that staff never before aligned with a single union.

Bob24

LeChienMefiant wrote: »

How does that scenario differ from if it were a formal union? Other than perhaps the fact that staff never before aligned with a single union.

Whether the entity is called union or what exactly it does is not that relevant here I think. What matters is whether the company can establish both ways open communication with the staff (which of course doesn’t mean accepting any demand, but at least being able to hear them).

The point is that if staff is starting to organise the company can’t ignore that forever or it will lead to issues and put management on the line.

LeChienMefiant

That's a big IF. I reckon Michael et al will be alright.

Bob24

LeChienMefiant wrote: »

That's a big IF. I reckon Michael et al will be alright.

Yes he’ll be fine as long as he can keep the lid on and things don’t explode.

Absolutely agree it’s a if (though far from impossible) but if some crew indeed start to take action I think he’s out. It would become personal and to solve the crisis the board would have no choice but putting someone else at the negotiation table.

Zascar

So many wife's brother is stranded in Barcelona. His flight back to Dublin this morning was cancelled last minute. They are totally useless, there are no flights out until Saturday and they are doing nothing for him.

To make things worse he was mugged in Barcelona yesterday and his wallet stolen. So he has literally no money, not a penny. Ryanair wont give him food vouchers anything, not a hotel to stay in - nothing. Absolutely disgraceful. I thought that was mandatory but apparently not. I had to book him a hotel myself but I'm now trying to find a way to get him to the hotel from the airport.

To top it all off he's Brazilian and does not speak English - a tiny amount of Spanish only. Guys is literally in tears over the phone after a nightmare day at this stage...

Is this really the standard practice? Can they get away with this?

I will do everything I can to never fly Ryanair ever again...