IMPACT Trade Union reach agreement with Aer Lingus

The IMPACT trade union which represents cabin crew at Aer Lingus have reached agreement with Aer Lingus which will save the airline's Shannon crew base and see the retention of Irish cabin crew on Transatlantic services. The agreement sees a substantial reduction in the number of proposed redundancies but comes at the cost of new productivity agreements, deferred pay increases and some job reductions.

Union officials said the deal contained a lot of sacrifice for cabin crew, but reduced the number of proposed job cuts including the retention of the Shannon base. If accepted the deal includes:

• Retention of Irish-based cabin crew and a slimmed-down Shannon base

• The deferral of pay increases under the Towards 2016 pay deal until July 2010

• The deferral of pay increments for two years

• New pay scales for new entrants. However pay scales remain unaltered for the first five years to protect new entrants

• Increased productivity measures, which will lead to a reduction of 94 jobs through the company’s voluntary redundancy programme.

The company had originally planned to cut 420 cabin crew and replace almost all Irish-based long-haul crew with US-based staff. Under this deal, job losses are reduced to 94, plus a separate reduction of 60, which is due to schedule changes out of Shannon airport.

The deal will be put to a ballot of cabin crew over the next two weeks.