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Could 2017 get any worse for Ryanair? In September the low-cost airline was forced to cancel 40 to 50 flights a day as a miscalculation of rosters and pilots’ holidays stranded tens of thousands of passengers across Europe. This month the company is embroiled in official strike action — and has even been forced to recognize a union for the first time. These crises are not “random misfortunes,” as the International Transport Workers’ Federation noted. They are connected by Ryanair’s “aggressive and cost-cutting business model.” The mismanagement of pilots’ rosters followed a longstanding refusal to deal with its workers collectively — a problem compounded when it responded not by entering negotiations but with a take-it-or-leave-it offer of bonuses to pilots willing to waive days off. It was a transparent effort to break solidarity and dissuade unionization and, to make matters worse, the offer was time limited. In October, Ryanair Captain Imelda Comer penned a letter to her fellow pilots. “When the company offers nothing except money,” she said, “they try to break our will to negotiate collectively.” With major bases, such as Stansted, rejecting Ryanair’s offer, Comer implored O’Leary to engage with the recently established European Employee Representation Committee (EERC). Comer herself was in the process of leaving the airline — a fact which made speaking out in the intimidating atmosphere less costly — but her role as a conduit for her fellow pilots’ collective demands was important and symbolic. It’s unlikely that Capt. Comer, or anybody else for that matter, anticipated the subsequent sequence of events. Ryanair has tried everything to avoid dealing with unions. Despite common problems facing the company across its network of bases, management always insisted on dealing with individual bases, individual ERCs and individual pilots. For years this approach appeared to work for the company, as it undercut wages elsewhere in the industry and secured exponential growth with cheap flights. But against a backdrop of increased competition for pilots from rivals such as Norwegian Air and a European Court of Justice ruling which prevented the airline imposing Irish labor law on all of its employees, the balance of power shifted.

The Strike On the 11 of December, the Irish directly-employed pilots overwhelmingly backed industrial action (94 percent). The vast majority of these were captains without whom planes could not leave the ground. Strike notice was issued for December 20th on the grounds that Ryanair management “failed to recognize the EERC” or the Irish pilots’ union (IALPA). The initial response was predictable: Ryanair pledged it would meet any industrial action “head on.” But the pressure was mounting. Italian pilots were due to conduct a four-hour stoppage between 1 pm and 5 pm on December 15 while Portuguese and German pilots unions endorsed taking industrial action only stopping short of setting dates. Facing transnational coordinated action Michael O’Leary had a stark choice: engage with the European ERC or face considerable disruption. The pilots’ demands were straightforward. They wanted two things: the establishment of a “genuine dialogue” between a collective body of Ryanair pilots and the management, rather than unilaterally-imposed one-way communication; and permanent direct contracts governed by the laws of the countries they lived in and worked from. These would provide a footing from which all other aspects of their working conditions could be negotiated. But Ryanair’s great fear about unionization has always been that it would lead to benchmarking pay and conditions with other airlines. Indeed, it has often presented unions simply as spies or saboteurs for rival companies. Accordingly, writing to pilots unions in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Ryanair stated that union recognition was possible “as long as unions establish Committees of Ryanair pilots to deal with Ryanair issues.” “Ryanair,” they said, “would not engage with pilots who fly for competitor airlines.” This position either displayed how little Ryanair understood trade unions or how much it held them in contempt. Unions, of course, are typically occupation-based rather than company-based. In addition to full-time staff, union roles are also carried out by representatives that come from competing companies. These representatives are the lifeblood of the union movement. Certainly, information is exchanged but this exchange permits one of the key objectives of collective bargaining: namely, to take wages and working conditions from the field of competition. Predictably, the pilots rejected these terms. With little runway left Ryanair issued a press release on the morning of the Italian work stoppages stating that it “agreed to recognize pilots unions to avoid widespread customer disruptions.” It was a historic moment. Ryanair, whose union-baiting CEO Michael O’Leary once said “hell would freeze over” before the company recognized unions, was being forced to do just that. And, what’s more, the pilots weren’t alone — the company also said it would recognize the unions representing cabin crew, who had been organizing for years without as much publicity or success. Europe’s labor movement, it seemed, was not the “busted flush” O’Leary claimed it was. For a number of days after the announcement, it drew more questions than answers. What explained the volte-face? Was it the return of Peter Bellew as the chief operations officer? The increased competition for pilots? The spate of cancellations? And then there was the question of what union recognition meant.