DUBLIN, May 29 — The drastic plans of a management trying to stave off bankruptcy and the resolve of a union determined to hold its own are set to collide Thursday, largely grounding Aer Lingus, the state-owned Irish airline.þþAt stake, besides the travel plans of 20,000 passengers a day, is the airline's future as a viable business that the Irish government badly wants to sell, with possible repercussions for other planned privatizations of enterprises like the national electric and gas utilities.þþThe unionized pilots at Aer Lingus will stage a one-day strike on Thursday, grounding the airline's fleet and forcing the cancellation of most of its 180 flights, including those due to carry thousands of Irish soccer fans to Japan and South Korea for the start of the World Cup soccer tournament on Saturday.þþAer Lingus has hired outside aircraft and pilots to provide a skeleton service on the airline's most important routes that day, including the daily trans-Atlantic flight to New York and shuttle flights to Heathrow Airport in London.þþBut it has canceled all flights on Friday and Saturday and has said it will consider daily the restarting of operations after that, with the board meeting on Thursday to discuss options for Sunday. The move took the union by surprise and introduced an aggressive new tone to Irish labor relations.þþÿClearly, the company has set itself the goal of breaking the union in this dispute,ÿ said Michael Landers, assistant general secretary and pilots' representative at the union, known as Impact. ÿIt's intimidation and bully-boy tactics of the highest order.ÿþþWillie Walsh, a former Aer Lingus pilot who last fall became the airline's fifth chief executive in three years, has so far played a quiet role in the conflict, and he is not well known in business circles here. ÿHe likes to win,ÿ Mr. Landers said. ÿAnd I don't think he thinks he has won unless you've lost.ÿþþThe pilots object to new scheduling arrangements that cut the required rest between flights from 12 to 10 hours. Seven pilots have been suspended without pay for refusing to fly after 10 hours off, and a pilots' association has placed large advertisements in newspapers arguing that the reduced rest period threatens passenger safety. þþThe scheduling change is one of many measures in a drastic survival plan adopted earlier this year after a disastrous 2001. The hoof-and-mouth outbreak in England and the terror attacks on Sept. 11 both caused sharp declines in Aer Lingus's passenger loads; by December the airline was hemorrhaging nearly $2 million in cash a day. It lost 140 million euros ($130 million) for the year.þþThe airline says the survival plan is now nonnegotiable, because a government labor relations mediator has already brokered sacrifices and compromises for various parts of the company that have been accepted by every employee group except the pilots. ÿThat is something that we will not compromise on,ÿ said Dan Loughrey, Aer Lingus's group corporate affairs director. ÿIt's just very, very clear that we must get this implemented if the company is to have a viable future.ÿ The pilots have accepted some other steps, like a two-year wage freeze.þþAccording to Mr. Loughrey, flights had to be canceled for Friday and Saturday because the strike on Thursday will have effects that last into the middle of next week, in particular by disrupting staffing for the trans-Atlantic routes.þþÿI don't think the management are bluffing,ÿ said Colum McCarthy, economist with DKM, consultants in Dublin. ÿA one-day strike is very destructive to an airline.ÿþþIn years gone by, the Irish government would have stepped in like a heavy-handed parent to manage a conflict like this. But European Union rules now strictly limit the financial aid that national governments can give airlines, even state-owned ones, and the government minister who oversees Aer Lingus lost her seat in Parliament in the election two weeks ago; her successor will not be appointed for at least another week.þþIndustry experts say that shutting service on the national airline will be devastating for tourism, a crucial industry here. ÿThis is a very bad message that we're sending out, that you can't get in or out of the country,ÿ Tony Brazil, president of the Irish Association of Travel Agents, told RTE Radio.þþAer Lingus has suffered in recent years at the hands of new entrants like Ryanair, especially on short-haul routes. Ryanair, Europe's biggest discount airline, carries 10.5 million passengers a year with just 1,500 employees, while Aer Lingus employs 6,000 people to carry 6 million passengers, according to Sean Barrett, an economics professor at Trinity College, Dublin. Aer Lingus has already shed more than 2,000 jobs, but ÿthere is no doubt that it is still a substantially overmanned operation,ÿ he said.þþ
Source: NY Times
