Aer Lingus staff vote for action

SIPTU staff in Aer Lingus have voted by a margin of over 80% to take industrial action up to and including strike action should the airline's management proceed with unilateral plans to make almost 1,300 staff redundant. 

SIPTU National Industrial Secretary Gerry McCormack said " We regret the disruption to the public which will almost certainly begin before December 1.....We will now be serving notice of industrial action immediately".

Aer Lingus said it was disappointed with the result of the ballot. Yesterday the airline's CEO Dermot Mannion warned that the cost improvement program to shave €74m in costs is unstoppable and irreversible.

Ina separate ballot 97% of SIPTU members who will be affected by the redundancy plan in the airline voted to invoke collective redundancy legislation (which entered the statue books as a result of the Irish Ferries debacle) should management proceed with plans to replace them with outsourced labour.