TRADE UNIONS at Aer Lingus have described the new management cost-cutting plan as "extreme and draconian".

In a move which could herald confrontation in the weeks ahead, Siptu's national industrial secretary Gerry McCormack said staff who had already undergone a radical cost-reduction programme last year "would not do it twice".

He said last year the union had agreed a reform plan including major work practice changes for 1,300 ground operation staff at the airline and that it would not be revisiting this agreement.

Siptu, which represents about 1,700 staff at the airline, is to convene a national meeting of shop stewards at Aer Lingus to consider a response to the company plan.

Impact, which has about 2,300 members at the company, said its branch executive and union officials would examine the proposals and consult with staff before commenting fully on the plan.

"The difficulty for our members is that the airline has, over the last eight years, returned to staff repeatedly looking for savings, on the basis that the company is facing ruin.

"Time and again our members have conceded to changes in pay and working conditions in response. As recently as nine months ago, our members delivered savings, valued at €15 million, to the company," a union spokesman said.

The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, a director of Aer Lingus, said that if the airline's proposals were not accepted by the staff that they could not proceed. He said there could be no question of imposing the measures on the staff. "My hope is that there will be a good quality engagement and a pragmatic approach is taken and out of that can come something that everybody can live with.

"The problem is the fact that the €100 million loss, if allowed to accumulate, would eat up the cash reserve and mean eventually that the company would be trading recklessly. As a board with fiduciary duties you have to deal with problems of that nature," he said.

"From my own position I completely understand where the staff side are coming from and I am only dealing with it in the context of it being a negotiated outcome.

"There can be no question of imposing this on the staff side. However, one also has to say that if agreement cannot be reached that the company clearly will be in a difficult situation then," he said.

In a statement, the Irish Airline Pilots' Association (IALPA) said the proposals were "as severe as we might have expected, following the months of speculation that have preceded its publication."

Unite, which represents technical workers at Aer Lingus, said it would "resist any attempt to impose job cuts or change the conditions on which its members are employed without prior negotiation and agreement".

"We will listen to proposals aimed at maximising jobs at the airline but any changes will have to be negotiated and agreed by our members," regional officer Brian Gormley said.

"The imposition of any compulsory redundancies, cuts in pay or unilaterally imposed changes to conditions or work practices will be resisted."

Mr Gormley said it was strange for the airline to make such a statement on the same day it revealed a 4 per cent increase in monthly passenger numbers for September over 2008 and a 2.5 per cent increase in load factors.