MEMBERS OF THE Ialpa pilot union working for Ryanair are to strike for 24 hours on Thursday 12 July.

The strike will commence at 1am that day and the union said it will notify the airline of additional strike days in due course.

Reacting to the announcement, Ryanair said that it was “disappointed” by the strike action, but said that it expected that the vast majority of its customers wouldn’t be affected.

“Ryanair will communicate next Tuesday by email and SMS text with all customers travelling from Ireland next Thursday if this unnecessary strike goes ahead,” a statement said.

Earlier the union said 99% of members had backed industrial action in a ballot. The ballot count commenced at 2pm today.

In a statement, the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association, which is a branch of the Fórsa trade union, said it has served notice of industrial action on the airline.

Only Irish-based pilots took part in the vote. The union said the dispute is over management’s approach to transferring pilots between its European and African bases. It is seeking an agreement that would govern base transfer arrangements and related matters.

“Our member pilots directly employed by Ryanair complain that there is no transparent system for the determination of important matters including voluntary/involuntary base transfer/allocation, command upgrade, allocation of annual leave and promotion,” the union said.

“When a pilot receives notice of a mandatory base change, or is denied a request for a change of base, such management decisions can have a devastating effect on family life.”

Ialpa said it is seeking a “seniority agreement” to provide members with a “fair and transparent mechanism” to understand how and why they are in the base, the order in which their turn may come up for a transfer, how and why they received a particular annual leave allocation and other decisions that should take account of the length of their service.

But Ryanair said that the strike action was “unnecessary”.

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“Ryanair has already forwarded to Forsa draft proposals on recognition, base transfers, a seniority list for all Irish pilots and a new annual leave system based on seniority.

Ryanair has invited Forsa to meet to discuss these proposals on 18 separate occasions, but Forsa has failed to reply or take up any of these invitations to meet.

It said that the last request for a meeting was sent out this morning.

As previously report by Fora, the airline has struggled to cut a deal with Dublin-based pilots after announcing its intention to recognise trade unions in December last year.

The low-cost carrier made the shock announcement last year that it would break a longstanding company policy and recognise pilots unions in a bid to avert strikes during the busy Christmas period.