The National Court (Audiencia Nacional – AN) has issued an order declaring the dismissals of 174 workers from Ryanair bases in the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands as inadmissible, due to an employment regulation file (ERE) that has already been declared illegal, forcing the Irish low cost airline to compensate these workers.

 


The compensation, according to the USO union, more than doubles Ryanair’s attempted proposal of liability.  It obliges Ryanair to additionally compensate workers with 15 additional days per year of service provision.

To these compensations are added the salaries not received by these workers since January 9, 2020 together with the payment of the Social Security quotas for the cabin crew and pilots not paid from January 2020 up until March 9, 2021.

The National Court has justified the ruling in the existence of “employer bad faith”; for fraudulent actions carried out by Ryanair after a ruling that declared the ERE null and void. They tried to include workers in a procedure for the suspension of contracts due to force majeure, who were the object of the dismissal declared null and void which was simply seen as “non-compliance with the ruling” simply by trying to use a “different justification” other than their own business interests, in a ruling that clearly states that “rejecting the reinstatements has caused damage to the workers who must receive the maximum compensation for the unjustified loss of their jobs”

The European Cockpit Association (ECA) spoke out against Ryanair’s employee relations tactics as far back as 2019, saying “Ryanair has a history of this behaviour, with the result of alienating its employees.”