Aer Lingus and Irish workers union Impact will hold talks tomorrow (June 11) to try and resolve a dispute over working rosters, which could end in strike action next week.
Previous talks between the two parties broke down and Impact has confirmed it plans to hold strikes on June 16 and June 18.
The Labour Court has now intervened in the dispute and invited both parties to attend a meeting tomorrow at 10am.
Aer Lingus said it has not yet drawn up contingency plans for the strikes, which could result in cancellations and long delays for up to 80,000 travellers. The airline has stopped taking booking for flights on these two dates.
Dispute
The long-running dispute centres on the issue of staffing rosters. Cabin crew want a 'five days on, three days off' rosters, which is worked by pilots.
Aer Lingus said it was willing to introduce 5:3 rosters on short-haul services, but said it was unwilling to implement such working practices on a trial basis and warned they must be “cost-neutral”.
That would mean a lot of features introduced into current rosters around “lifestyle requests” would have to go.
Impact claims it was given a "take-it-or-leave-it" proposal and that’s why it walked away from negotiations.
The union have called current cabin crew roster patterns “erratic”, “unpredictable” and “subject to changes at very short notice”.
“Many cabin crew are struggling to maintain caring arrangements when they are on duty and many have reported incidences of extreme fatigue necessitating medical attention. It cannot continue like this,” said Impact official Michael Landers.
Landers said the proposal on offer could result in “hundreds of Irish jobs being exported to the USA”.
Megaphone diplomacy
Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar called for an end to the threats from both parties, saying the Government body was available to both sides to help resolve the dispute over rosters.
"Essentially this is a dispute about rosters and everyone knows that sooner or later it's going to be sorted out by negotiation," he added.
“What’s happening at the moment is megaphone diplomacy with threats of strikes from one side and threats of redundancies from the other, and that isn’t serving anyone’s purpose.”
In a statement on its website, the airline said it wanted to assure customers that it would try to prevent any disruption to travellers’ plans.
“We sincerely apologise to customers for the uncertainty this threatened industrial action causes,” a spokesman said.