Ryanair ‘cannot exclude’ more redundancies in Portugal

  • Lusa
  • 23 December 2020

The low-cost airline assumed that cannot exclude further redundancies in Portugal, but has given assurances that it will do all it can to protect the jobs it has in the country.

The low-cost airline Ryanair cannot exclude further redundancies in Portugal but has given assurances that it will do all it can to protect the 360 jobs it has in the country.

Darrell Hughes, the airline’s human resources director, told Lusa that, apart from the 23 planned in Porto and six in Lisbon, there are no more plans for redundancies, neither in Ponta Delgada nor in Faro, where Ryanair is also present.

“We have no more plans, but our flight schedule for the year is not yet finished. We cannot exclude that possibility [of more redundancies], but we will try to protect jobs,” he said.

Over the weekend, the National Civil Aviation Flight Personnel Union (SNPVAC) accused Ryanair of starting a new collective dismissal process, now at the Lisbon base, after having done so in Porto.

“Ryanair decided, in an incomprehensible way and without any management criteria, to start a new collective dismissal process, at the Lisbon base, involving six crew members, who curiously refused to sign, despite pressure from Ryanair, an addendum which, as the union warned at the time, is illegal,” the SNPVAC said in a statement.

The union also noted that it learned that Ryanair resumed, on December 1 of this year, the process of collective dismissal of the cabin crew at the Porto base, which reached 23 people.

Darrell Hughes noted that the carrier had already achieved agreements with 100% of the pilots and 99% of the crew to obtain cost savings and efficiencies that are then returned over a four-year period.

“During the summer, the scenario has changed a lot concerning the winter calendar and we are in a position of significant crew surplus in Porto and Lisbon. In a final attempt to save those jobs we started negotiating an agreement with SNPVAC to keep the jobs for everyone” but it was not possible to get that agreement, according to Darrell Hughes.

“Our door is always open for negotiations and we work hard to save jobs. But we worked on a solution for nine months, they signed an agreement, but then failed to ratify it. There are no negotiations at the moment and it’s a little late,” he said when asked about the possibility of an agreement.