Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Under its most recent business re-structuring plan, Ireland's State airline Aer Lingus has set a target of 1,325 job cuts over the next three years. The severance package will cost the company a total of €80m.The voluntary scheme is based on a formula of 9 weeks pay for each year of service, with a minimum payout of €40,000, and is ‘capped' at two and half years service. This offer would undoubtedly fall at the very highest end of redundancy settlements in Irish industrial relations.
The deadline for applications is October 15. Most of the redundancies are expected to happen in the relatively short term and involve the outsourcing of some areas and major cut backs in others. The severance offer is understood to have attracted considerable interest among staff, with most enquiries coming from workers with shorter service records. But, the company may still find it difficult to achieve the full amount on a voluntary basis, with the unions resisting compulsory job losses.
The company believes the plan is essential, based on a realistic financial and strategic assessment of the business. It insists that it needs to cut its cost base further in the face of intensified competition in the airline industry.
The Aer Lingus unions - SIPTU and IMPACT - are concerned with the future working conditions of the almost 3,000 staff who will remain after the job reductions have been implemented. SIPTU is specifically concerned with the company's plans to outsource areas such as catering, baggage handling and so forth.
Around 2,000 workers have already departed voluntarily since the earlier 2001 survival plan was announced, on terms of four weeks basic pay per year of service, with a cap of 104 weeks, plus an extra €1,000 per year of service up to a maximum of €20,000.
Eurofound (2004), Aer Lingus, Internal restructuring in Ireland, factsheet number 60604, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/60604.
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