Aer Lingus Flight Crew Industrial relations thread 2024

Mark Tighe has experience in this. He was also IALPA President during the strike and subsequent lockout of 2022.

He is almost 34 years with Aer Lingus, according to his Linkedin page.

You can Google it. It was after 9/11.

Just a reminder that Aer Lingus cancelled 76 more flights this week even though the pilots are working their contracts to the letter and are on full pay.

Does anyone know how long the Labour Court is likely to sit on this before issuing its recommendation? Assuming no escalation and work to rule stays while the Labour Court decides, I’d say that most holiday makers would benefit from this dragging out a bit.

Leaving aside your "sitting on this" language, the latest "Irish Times report states:

"…Both sides said the court would issue a recommendation aimed at brokering industrial peace at the airline “within a few days” following a hearing that lasted more than 3½ hours on Wednesday afternoon.

Capt Mark Tighe, Ialpa president, confirmed afterwards that the union would ballot its members in Aer Lingus on any Labour Court recommendation."

And that proves what exactly…?
A work to rule is designed to cause disruption,otherwise what’s the point.

I thought aer lingus pilots flying hours per annum were lower than other airlines?

There’s an egregious amount of clueless opinion being passed off as knowledgeable statements in this thread. It boggles the mind that people apparently can’t be bothered having the basic due diligence to read the pages of useful info contained in previous posts before engaging their fingers. Hopefully some of the below helps…

Correct. But this WTR was designed to highlight in the public domain how under-resourced the airline is. As has been said before, the pilots are available to work their rosters as published and are also fully available on standby to cover roster changes. What they are now not available to do is work on their rostered days off or work duties that incur a significant delay beyond what was originally rostered - that’s what standby pilots are for but alas, EI doesn’t have enough of those.

At no stage has IALPA ever played the ‘poor’ card. Just because a worker is perceived to be earning a high salary doesn’t bar that worker from exercising their industrial right to ask for more - in line with inflation and the company’s profitability. Any argument otherwise is in bad faith. Also, ‘overtime pay’ in EI isn’t what you might think it is. In fact, conversely with other airlines, the payment for ‘overtime’ isn’t considered worth the hassle for pilots in EI and their free time is valued a hell of a lot more. With the right incentives in any job, staff are perfectly happy to provide ample flexibility. Those incentives don’t exist in EI.

Good effort but the reality is significantly worse. There’ll be many pilots who will work 3 to 4 flex rosters in a 12-month period. That’s up to a third of their year where they won’t be able to depend on a 5 On/3 Off pattern in order to plan future commitments/appointments/childcare/holidays etc. if FR can crew their operation with a permanent 5/4 pattern then EI should be able to easily manage the same with a permanent 5/3 pattern without disrupting it with flex. They need flex because they use it as a 5/2 crutch to extract increased productivity out of their insufficient pilot numbers. Flex was never intended to be abused this way.

As has also been previously explained, EI’s op as a mixed-fleet carrier can only be compared with other operators who roster a mix of short and long haul. Regardless, there’s no work condition or agreement limiting the number of hours EI can roster their pilots - they can roster them right up to legal FTLs if they like. Pilots can only work the rosters they’re given! If their productivity is apparently down then you should only be asking why their rostering is so inefficient. Perhaps it has something to do with the inordinate amount of time EI’s pilots spend on the road between DUB/ORK/SNN - none of which attracts any sort of duty pay. Or maybe it’s got more to do with the colossal amount of hire-ins used last year which took thousands of payable flight hours away from EI’s pilots.

How much an employee gets paid doesn’t undermine their ‘right to disconnect’ and no employer has any business contacting an employee outside of a period where they are required to be contactable. Pilots are rostered standby duties and are supposedly contactable only within these periods. Unfortunately, the reality in EI is somewhat different with the company regularly disturbing rest periods with calls, texts and emails - often in breach of WCs. The more senior pilots will push-back against this and stand their ground but junior pilots often don’t have the same confidence to do so.

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The airline industry and its work practices have very few parallels to the rest of the working world which goes a long way towards explaining why the general public has, understandably, such a hard time wrapping their head around it. This is why EI management’s disinformation campaign has been so apparently effective when you hear and read people making assertions on various topics that bear no resemblance to the reality of being an aviation employee. It’s a notably unhealthy and unsociable career with a relatively limited longevity (these descriptors not being unique to aviation, of course). I have now thankfully left scheduled passenger ops behind and no amount of money could pay me to go back to it.

edit - spelling and detail.

Source on your basic facts? Aer Lingus are pretty average in the wage department, I fly for a LCC and make far more per hour than an EI pilots and will for pretty much every stage of my career if I stay here

Not sure I’ve ever heard IALPA request BA wages? Regarding viable rostering, what does this mean?

Hire ins and overtime is a smokescreen?! You haven’t heard about this before but the topic has been part of failed discussions between EI and pilots for years now. The overtime is not worth their while and the constant contact outside of working hours needs to be addressed.

John, I sincerely wish you the very best. I hope you get a deal that you will be happy with. I have heard something of what you say and this was that there are pilots who were open to coming to a compromise/deal and others who are from the “no surrender” camp….and it is this group who hold sway.

In unions it would not be unusual for there to be a leadership of people with strong views, and a membership who are of a range of views, from strong to moderate. Support for industrial action doesn't necessarily translate to everyone being up for what that might mean if a dispute drags on with no end in sight. Anyway, let us hope that the Labour Court process manages to bring this one towards a conclusion.