Aer Lingus pilots begin industrial action today in the face of management’s stubborn refusal to meet their demands for a pay rise that matches inflation. Stewart Smyth explains how the pilots have been mistreated by management and argues that a win for them is a win for us all.
In certain quarters, there’s a growing acceptance that below inflation pay rises are the norm. Two years ago, public sector workers accepted a pay deal called Building Momentum, which failed to match inflation. The new public sector pay deal agreed this year does not aim to catch up on any of that lost pay.
On the other hand, companies and employers have done very well out of the high inflation we have experienced over the past three years. SIPTU researcher, Michael Taft, shows that rather than wage increases, it is actually profiteering that drove the inflation increases – a phenomenon called greedflation.
The organised labour movement needs to squash the idea that real terms pay cuts are acceptable.
To that end, the pilots’ union, Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (IALPA), decided enough was enough and put in a pay claim to match inflation. A pay claim of 24% may sound excessive, but it covers a five-year period – the pilots in Aer Lingus have not had a pay rise for 5 years. Factor in the cost of living crisis, with inflation reaching over 8% in 2022, and the claim looks a lot more reasonable.
In fact, a 24% increase is just enough to get back to the real terms pay level of 2019.
Aggressive – Intimidatory Management
As IALPA spokespeople have pointed out on several occasions, the size of their claim is due to poor management practices. Instead of annual or even biennial pay deals, management at Aer Lingus has ignored the pilots and the union’s attempts to secure pay rises since 2019. The union has engaged in 22-months’ worth of negotiations, including through the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court, but with no meaningful offer from Aer Lingus management.
Often we don’t hear about management practices within companies, with the media more focused on trying to attack workers standing up for decent pay and working conditions. However, when a strike is threatened there is an opportunity to expose management behaviour to some scrutiny.
So when Mark Tighe, President of IALPA, was interviewed on This Week on RTÉ, he was able to catalogue the intimidation tactics management that Aer Lingus were engaging in. These included targeting pilots who management thought were taking excessive amounts of sick leave, letters sent to union leaders accusing them of orchestrating unlawful industrial action, threatening to take the union and its leaders to court and writing to individual pilots accusing them of breaching the company’s social media protocol.
In the same programme, it was reported that two letters sent to IALPA from Aer Lingus management alleging IALPA was behind an increase in the levels of sickness reported in the company, and also threatening to cancel the collective bargaining agreement between the union and company. Marcus Dowling, Senior Council & Barrister specialising in industrial action, stated that both of these letters were very aggressive moves by management.
Any trade unionist involved in organising industrial action or seeking union recognition in the first place will recognise these types of management tactics and bullying attitudes.
Class Struggle on the Airwaves
The media’s support for the management’s stance was also evident in an interview with Willie Walsh on Morning Ireland. Walsh, who is a former CEO of Aer Lingus, British Airways and their parent company International Airlines Group (IAG), is the current Director General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The IATA is the trade association for the world’s airlines – it’s the bosses’ lobby group.
The IATA has previously been described as a cartel, with one history of the association stating,
“There can be little doubt IATA was effectively a suppliers’ cartel, whose object was to maximise its members’ profits”.
So you can’t get a more embedded view from the bosses’ side in the airline industry than Willie Walsh. Of course the Morning Ireland presenters never mentioned any of this context. Instead, Walsh was presented as some sort of independent expert, who just happens to have little sympathy for the pilots and their pay claim, which he proclaimed to be “way out of line”.
Company Profits and Executive Pay Rises
Of course, the pilots’ claim is not way out of line but, as we saw before, is just about standing still, keeping up with inflation since 2019. Irish pilots (once they are established) are well-paid in comparison to most workers in the country, although graduate pilots can start on salaries of around €36,000 per annum. However, when you compare salaries with pilots in other countries, there are a dozen countries (mainly in Europe) where pilots on average earn more than in Ireland.
Moreover, Aer Lingus can easily afford to pay the union’s claim. In 2023, the airline made a profit of €225 million. IAG is making record profits, as the Financial Times reported last October: “a 43 per cent increase in third-quarter operating profit before exceptional items to €1.75bn, its second consecutive quarter of record results”.
At the same time, bosses at Aer Lingus have been cashing in, with big pay rises. In 2021 directors at the airline received just over €1m in pay, which increased to €2.7m in 2022. Aer Lingus’ board of directors is composed of just 5 individuals.
Further, over the period from 2019 to 2023 (one year less than the pilots pay claim) senior executive management in Aer Lingus saw their pay increase by 66%.
Workers fighting for their share
One of the suggestions for ending the dispute is that Aer Lingus would be willing to make a higher offer if the pilots would be willing to accept greater efficiencies and flexible working practices. We all know what this means – more work, for less pay. The response from Mark Tighe (IALPA, President) to this suggestion was unequivocal – “if you have to pay for the pay rise yourself, it’s not really a pay rise”.
We already know the amount of flexibility and free work that the pilots currently do, as just working to contract (i.e. what they are paid to do), results in Aer Lingus having to cancel 244 flights over a five day period.
When you put all this together it’s clear that the pilots are not asking for too much, but just to stand still, and that management at Aer Lingus has decided to pick a fight with the union. The last time an IAG company pursued such a strategy was in 2019 when British Airways pilots struck for 48-hours, “that saw 2,325 flights cancelled, and a cost of about €137mn for IAG”.
However, Willie Walsh was right about one thing, when he claimed that if the pilots won other workers would be looking for similar pay claims. And that’s why all workers should support the pilots. They are battling now and if they win, it will make it easier for all of us to get pay rises in the future.
