European pilot group demands Ryanair meet unions collectively

Ryanair pilots’ unions demanded Wednesday a joint meeting with management, saying individual talks on a new collective bargaining system were not satisfactory, according to a letter sent by the European Cockpit Association.<br/>The letter dated Jan. 24, which was on European Cockpit Association notepaper and signed by 11 trade unions, also demanded that Ryanair commit by March 1 to introduce permanent direct employment contracts in accordance with the local laws of the country where staff are based. Ryanair, in a statement, refused the idea of meeting unions collectively. “Ryanair won’t be meeting with any collective group of competitor pilot unions,” it said, adding that such a grouping would have no legal standing or negotiating license. Spokesmen for the ECA and Irish trade union IMPACT declined to comment on whether the letter, seen by Reuters, represented their position. Ryanair stunned the European aviation sector in December by announcing plans to recognise pilot unions for the first time in its 32-year history in a bid to stave off a series of threatened strikes. Since then it has held meetings with a number of national trade unions on formalising the recognition and negotiating collective bargaining agreements. But the letter, addressed to Ryanair’s COO and chief people officer, said the airline was in several countries “de facto sidelining” the unions by “trying to push through each Ryanair base a unilateral, non-negotiated pay rise offer” with a number of conditions attached. Ryanair, in a letter in response to ECA on Wednesday, described those claims as “materially inaccurate”. <br/>