Ryanair Strike, Industrial relations discussion Mod note in post 1

billy few mates

rivegauche wrote: »

https://jobs.flightglobal.com/job/1401484763/b737-captain-ryanair-mobile-contractor/

5 year contract will attract the Mercenary but not Militant Pilot that Ryanair seeks.
With enough of them they continue to recognise Unions but shrink Union influence. If Unions are under under 20% of workforce per Country then they can strike as much as they want and Ryanair will work around them.

Sounds good...

L1011

Until such time as countries continue to crack down on spurious self employment, which is a certainty.

john boye

rivegauche wrote: »

https://jobs.flightglobal.com/job/1401484763/b737-captain-ryanair-mobile-contractor/

5 year contract will attract the Mercenary but not Militant Pilot that Ryanair seeks.
With enough of them they continue to recognise Unions but shrink Union influence. If Unions are under under 20% of workforce per Country then they can strike as much as they want and Ryanair will work around them.

You think having 20% of the workforce on strike all the time is sustainable?

rivegauche

L1011 wrote: »

Until such time as countries continue to crack down on spurious self employment, which is a certainty.

It is posssible to contract in labour(a service) legally irrespective of whether you believe these contracts as offered are legal or not and services can be offered across the E.U.

billy few mates

L1011 wrote: »

Until such time as countries continue to crack down on spurious self employment, which is a certainty.

As they already have in Germany, which is the main reason so many of them were given permanent positions in the first place.
For Ryanair the choice is simple, pull out of the market altogether if it threatens their business model or suck it up and write it off as 'the cost of doing business' in that market....

rivegauche

If my company can have contractors on site in Germany for many, many years and ending contract with them at the end of this month then Ryanair can too.
Contracting is not illegal but the laws must be abided by and then you get reliable supply of labour without contractors being able to strike. They can withdraw services if they want but then they can expect the contract break clauses to be activated.
If you have militant staff on payroll you are stuck with them.

rivegauche

john boye wrote: »

You think having 20% of the workforce on strike all the time is sustainable?

20% of the workforce on strike 100% of the time will be paid a wage 0% of that time.

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

It is posssible to contract in labour(a service) legally irrespective of whether you believe these contracts as offered are legal or not and services can be offered across the E.U.

Except it really looks as if it won't be legal, anywhere, soon due to the damage to employees rights and social insurance revenue that spurious self employment has caused.

billy few mates

Certain accountable positions within an airline must only be held by permanent employees. There's currently no limit on the ratio of FTEs to Contract pilots at the moment but there is for maintenance staff (max 50%) it might well only be a matter of time before the regulatory authority starts looking to introduce similar rules on the operational side.
They might not like the idea of a transient workforce...

rivegauche

L1011 wrote: »

Except it really looks as if it won't be legal, anywhere, soon due to the damage to employees rights and social insurance revenue that spurious self employment has caused.

Who says contractors in Germany don't have their share paid.
Ireland in general may be the wild west but that is not the case in Germany.

billy few mates

rivegauche wrote: »

Who says contractors in Germany don't have their share paid.
Ireland in general may be the wild west but that is not the case in Germany.

Why have all the contractors in Germany been offered permanent positions..?

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

Who says contractors in Germany don't have their share paid.
Ireland in general may be the wild west but that is not the case in Germany.

Social Insurance issues are but one of the many reasons the nonsense is being banned. Employers who rely on it (including yours, based on what you've said) are going to get quite a shock.

rivegauche

L1011 wrote: »

Social Insurance issues are but one of the many reasons the nonsense is being banned. Employers who rely on it (including yours, based on what you've said) are going to get quite a shock.

Dear oh dear, you don't understand. they've been replaced by more.

Ryanair did mess up in Germany. Up until March they had about 50% pilot employees in Germany and since then they converted a large proportion of the contractors to employees and are at over 80% employees now.
How were they repaid? VC called a strike. If it means that Ryanair must base their planes in Poland and fly in to Germany early morning every morning then that is what they'll do. EU law allows services to be sold throughout Europe. Pilots can provide a service rather than be employed and Ich-AG self-employment is commonplace in Germany.

VC are openly saying that they want ticket prices to increase.
They are being misleading with their arguments too.
They compare base salary for eurowings and ryanair but don't mention that ryanair pilots workign the hours earn more. They compare Lufthansa widebody pilot salaries to ryanair salaries.

billy few mates

rivegauche wrote: »

If my company can have contractors on site in Germany for many, many years and ending contract with them at the end of this month then Ryanair can too.
Contracting is not illegal but the laws must be abided by and then you get reliable supply of labour without contractors being able to strike. They can withdraw services if they want but then they can expect the contract break clauses to be activated.
If you have militant staff on payroll you are stuck with them.

Tell me again how Ryanair are going to replace all the permanent employees in Germany with contractors...
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2018/0315/947718-ryanair-german-pilots/

Have the contractors that work for your company in Germany also had similar early morning visits from the local constabulary...?
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/german-investigators-raid-six-ryanair-bases-1.2712565

billy few mates

rivegauche wrote: »

Dear oh dear, you don't understand. they've been replaced by more.

Ryanair did mess up in Germany. Up until March they had about 50% pilot employees in Germany and since then they converted a large proportion of the contractors to employees and are at over 80% employees now.
How were they repaid? VC called a strike. If it means that Ryanair must base their planes in Poland and fly in to Germany early morning every morning then that is what they'll do. EU law allows services to be sold throughout Europe. Pilots can provide a service rather than be employed and Ich-AG self-employment is commonplace in Germany.

VC are openly saying that they want ticket prices to increase.
They are being misleading with their arguments too.
They compare base salary for eurowings and ryanair but don't mention that ryanair pilots workign the hours earn more. They compare Lufthansa widebody pilot salaries to ryanair salaries.

You seem to have a fixation about Ryanair pilots in Dublin and Germany, you need to 'let it go' Elsa ..

Anyway, I personally can't see anything wrong with increasing the fares to give the pilots whatever they want to maintain industrial harmony, it's got to be better than the current situation.
€1 per ticket should easily cover it with enough change left over to pay for the management Christmas bonuses. The punters won't notice and even if they did they'd hardly mind if they know it means their flights aren't going to get cancelled.
It's a win win situation all round and small change in the grand scheme of things...

rivegauche

You are very selective with the information you provide or maybe you can't read german. The only people who got in trouble were self-employed fiddling their taxes, not Ryanair. I don't have time to find the report and you wouldn't understand it as it is in German.

They don't want a €1 increase that is the acceptable line that is being spun by apologists like you. VC want 10 to 20 euro per ticket to cover their ambitions.

billy few mates

rivegauche wrote: »

You are very selective with the information you provide or maybe you can't read german. The only people who got in trouble were self-employed fiddling their taxes, not Ryanair. I don't have time to find the report and you wouldn't understand it as it is in German.

They don't want a €1 increase that is the acceptable line that is being spun by apologists like you. VC want 10 to 20 euro per ticket to cover their ambitions.

Very interesting, so what you're saying is the people who were caught up in this were "fiddling their taxes" but you don't have time to prove this and even if you did we wouldn't understand it because you've decided we don't speak German...?

Also do you have a source or reference for this €10 to €20 per ticket increase that you claim VCockpit are demanding or is this another one of your made up facts...?

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

Dear oh dear, you don't understand. they've been replaced by more.

You aren't even making coherent sense now. This is the second post where there's been some random babble that makes no sense in any context

The contractor pilot house of cards is falling down - desperate recruitment ads just add to that, whereas you seem convinced it's a sign of what's going to fix it

As goes flying the planes in from Poland to operate German flights - that's your way to add 20 quid a ticket, or more. Destroy aircraft utilisation, add cycles, burn hours.

You do not understand the aviation industry at all and are trying to force the norms of whatever industry you work in on to it.

Bob24

I think some some of the quotes seen here could be quite harmful for Ryanair in terms of what's coming next:

Speaking in Charleroi this morning, a representative for Belgian union ACV-CSC Didier Lebbe claimed Ryanair had no respect for pilots.

He said: "Ryanair is the only multinational in Belgium that doesn't respect the Belgian law and that's not normal.

"We ask the authorities in Belgium, but also the European authorities, to do their job. If they don't do it, it means that Ryanair has more power than the local authorities in Europe.

"Ryanair has no respect at all. They have no respect at all for the pilots and also for the cabin crew."

It is putting the spotlight on their employment practices and what unions are looking for (at least in words) is not just a quick pay hike and rather "respect" and a complete change of the employment structure to bring it (in their view) in line with labour legislation. Accusations not to respect the law are more serious than your usual pay dispute and it will be hard for national and European authorities to sit idle and do nothing (I know they are already looking into this, but this will make it a more pressing issue).

rivegauche

billy few mates wrote: »

Very interesting, so what you're saying is the people who were caught up in this were "fiddling their taxes" but you don't have time to prove this and even if you did we wouldn't understand it because you've decided we don't speak German...?

Jebus Christ you need to be spoon fed.
https://www.wort.lu/de/business/scheinselbststaendigkeit-und-steuerbetrug-ermittlungen-gegen-100-ryanair-piloten-578e337aac730ff4e7f63bbf

"Die Ermittlungen richten sich nicht gegen Ryanair selbst."

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

Jebus Christ you need to be spoon fed.

You are already on a very thin line for civility, this is a last warning before a week ban

rivegauche

L1011 wrote: »

As goes flying the planes in from Poland to operate German flights - that's your way to add 20 quid a ticket, or more. Destroy aircraft utilisation, add cycles, burn hours.

basing planes in one country and returning to that country at the end of the night will not add significant cost and it has been the model that Ryanair have used throughout its history. Adding €5 cost per ticket to make yourself strikeproof and ensuring that you can maintain a cost advantage over your competitors is preferable to capitulating to Unions and finding your ticket prices are near identical to those of legacy carriers.
The Unions figure they will always have a job and the pilots figure they will always be able to pick up a job so they figure they can afford to run Ryanair in to the ground and then the public suffer but the Pilots don't care about the public and it is obvious from posts here that some pilots consider themselves better than their passengers as if they are the only people who are trained to work in a chosen career.

Nijmegen

I daresay where the contracts are concerned, Ryanair is just one example of something that could very well get regulated in years to come as the nature of work changes. We already see Uber etc getting pulled up in various jurisdictions with court cases that threaten to make independent drivers into employees.

I generally have no problem with employing someone as a contractor for a genuine temporary piece of work, but I think that if companies use you as such for a long period of time then you should be entitled to more protections as an employee would. I don't think contracts should be banned, but I also think that generally society is not well off if employment - even in high profile, responsible technical jobs like piloting - becomes overly precarious for a larger percentage of the population. There's too much room for abuse and just generally for making people feel crap. Overall I think that will have a negative effect on our society, and in Europe at least I can see rules and regulations on this being tightened over time.

You need to have a flexible labour force, but realistically I would suggest that the current arrangement is perhaps too flexible to be sustainable. And part of the Ryanair strikes I think is part of a wider disgruntlement with the arrangement throughout the workforce; of course combined with plenty of local and company specific gripes.

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

basing planes in one country and returning to that country at the end of the night will not add significant cost and it has been the model that Ryanair have used throughout its history.

You simply don't know what you're talking about here.

Having no planes based in Germany means all flights are W pattern. You have no early departures - particularly in Germany due to their strict curfews. Unless you have decent traffic on all the inbounds you are carrying air, burning crew hours and fuel in the process.

It is massively inefficient which is why Ryanair operate bases down to a single aircraft all over their network.

rivegauche

You are wrong. If other airlines can fly in from other cities in the early hours of to FRA then Ryanair can do that too and for all the other major cities in Germany too where curfews operate. They arrive in as the airports open for business and fly out before the airports close at night.
Admit that you are incorrect on this point. It is not ideal but if your cost base is being messed up by the Union it is an option which retains the low cost base and (somewhat reduced) flexibility of the low cost carrier.

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

You are wrong. If other airlines can fly in from other cities in the early hours of to FRA then Ryanair can do that too and for all the other major cities in Germany too where curfews operate. They arrive in as the airports open for business and fly out before the airports close at night.
Admit that you are incorrect on this point. It is not ideal but if your cost base is being messed up by the Union it is an option which retains the low cost base and (somewhat reduced) flexibility of the low cost carrier.

Other airlines that operate early flights out of FRA have aircraft based there, or night stopping there.

Ryanair do not do night stopping. Ever. It would add significantly more than your fiver to the flights.

You simply do not understand the business of aviation at all and continue trying to ram it in to your industry view, which does not work.


You add massive costs and complexity (as well as throw away competitiveness and attractiveness to higher yield passengers) to operations just to get, what, a year or two more before the country you've moved to bans the practice. That may practical in say the IT industry but it isn't here.

rivegauche

L1011 wrote: »

Other airlines that operate early flights out of FRA have aircraft based there, or night stopping there.

Ryanair do not do night stopping. Ever. It would add significantly more than your fiver to the flights.

You simply do not understand the business of aviation at all and continue trying to ram it in to your industry view, which does not work.


You add massive costs and complexity (as well as throw away competitiveness and attractiveness to higher yield passengers) to operations just to get, what, a year or two more before the country you've moved to bans the practice. That may practical in say the IT industry but it isn't here.

You can say that I am wrong all you want but a large proportion of the Ryanair fleet already operate a W and when Ryanair move planes to Poland those planes are not going to be restricted to Eastern Europe where the Customers don't have much purchasing power.

and what's more LH983 arrives in to Frankfurt from Dublin after curfew is lifted each morning. flight radar tells me that lh983 airframe d-airl landed in dublin at 22:47 last night and left at 05:55 this morning.

So, do you want to apologize?

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

You can say that I am wrong all you want but a large proportion of the Ryanair fleet already operate a W and when Ryanair move planes to Poland those planes are not going to be restricted to Eastern Europe where the Customers don't have much purchasing power.

So they'll be operating below-par yields on the first and last leg of the day, just so they can spite some German staff; using up crew hours (which they are deathly short on) and running up cycles on the airframes when they could be making much higher yields operating them from bases.

rivegauche wrote: »

and what's more LH983 arrives in to Frankfurt from Dublin after curfew is lifted each morning. flight radar tells me that lh983 airframe d-airl landed in dublin at 22:47 last night and left at 05:55 this morning.

What is the relevance of this random timetable dump?

LH nightstop an aircraft in Dublin. The first inbound to Dublin is a FRA based aircraft.

Ryanair do not nightstop and would not be able to operate timings that early at the second airport on W patterns

rivegauche wrote: »

So, do you want to apologize?

For?

You do not understand the aviation industry. That isn't going to change in a short period of time.

rivegauche

I am going to assume you misunderstood my point rather than being willfully obtuse:
Even the mighty Lufthansa have narrowbody airplanes overnighting beyond German borders on inter-european routes that serve German cities. If Lufthansa can do it then so can Ryanair and if the cost is lower in not basing planes in Germany to serve the German market (or Irish market or whatever market they are operating in with Industrial unrest which can't be resolved amicably) then the right decision is to not base planes in the Country where the Unions are preventing them from carrying out their business and carry out business in that Country at legal arms length. Ryanair have already intimated they'll do this to a limited extent for Ireland and can do the same for Germany.
Then they have no problems with vereinigung cockpit oder leihpiloten and their cost increase marginally but managably.
I already showed they are advertising for Mobile Contractor Captains so Ryanair are certainly working on it as a strategy to address their labour issues.

Ryanair undeniably operate W routes (thankfully otherwise Strikes would have caused considerably more suffering for passengers in recent weeks)
I show Ryanair base and will base planes in more accommodating countries.
I show German based competitors serving Germany from abroad.
I show jobs advertised for contracting pilots specifically for this task.
I have proved the point which I wish to make and all you can say is I don't understand anything about Aviation.

L1011

rivegauche wrote: »

I am going to assume you misunderstood my point rather than being willfully obtuse:
Even the mighty Lufthansa have narrowbody airplanes overnighting beyond German borders on inter-european routes that serve German cities. If Lufthansa can do it then so can Ryanair and if the cost is lower in not basing planes in Germany to serve the German market (or Irish market or whatever market they are operating in with Industrial unrest which can't be resolved amicably) then the right decision is to not base planes in the Country where the Unions are preventing them from carrying out their business and carry out business in that Country at legal arms length. Ryanair have already intimated they'll do this to a limited extent for Ireland and can do the same for Germany.
Then they have no problems with vereinigung cockpit oder leihpiloten and their cost increase marginally but managably.
I already showed they are advertising for Mobile Contractor Captains so Ryanair are certainly working on it as a strategy to address their labour issues.

Ryanair undeniably operate W routes (thankfully otherwise Strikes would have caused considerably more suffering for passengers in recent weeks)
I show Ryanair base and will base planes in more accommodating countries.
I show German based competitors serving Germany from abroad.
I show jobs advertised for contracting pilots specifically for this task.
I have proved the point which I wish to make and all you can say is I don't understand anything about Aviation.

You don't understand the difference between nightstopping and having your aircraft based at an airport.

There isn't anything for me to misunderstand as your argument is incoherent and based on not understand the basic concept. Your examples are useless chaff that show nothing except your lack of knowledge of the industry.

To explain what actually happens - Lufthansa night stop a German based aircraft in Dublin to operate a service they could not do with a German based aircraft otherwise. They pay for the staff to do so including hotel costs. They are not doing this to avoid having the aircraft based in Germany, because it is based in Germany. Ryanairs approach to operating early flights is to do so only from a base. They do not night stop.

You also don't seem to realise that advertising for pilots does not mean you'll get any - a rather simple thing there.