High Court to hear bid to prevent planned strike at airports

The High Court will today hear a legal bid to prevent a planned strike by the Siptu trade union that could effectively close some of the country's main airports for a four-hour period on Friday.

Last Friday the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) and Ryanair initiated separate proceedings aimed at forcing a cancellation by Siptu of the planned work stoppage.

The proposed industrial action, involving four-hour stoppages at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports on Friday morning, arises from a long-running dispute over pensions at Aer Lingus and the DAA.

Siptu members in the DAA and Aer Lingus last month voted for industrial action as part of the row over the joint pension scheme, which has a deficit of about €700 million.

Short notice
Last Friday, Ryanair and the DAA separately secured leave to serve short notice of their proceedings against Siptu.

The case being brought by the Dublin Airport Authority was mentioned in the High Court yesterday, with a view to the injunction application being heard today.

Siptu last night said it would defend its position in the court hearing.

Meanwhile the Mandate trade union, which represents mainly retail staff in the DAA, has deferred industrial action planned for Friday.

A spokesman for the union said the planned stoppage had been put off pending the report of the new expert group that has been established to look into the pension issue.

Passengers affected
If the Siptu strike goes ahead about 3,000 Aer Lingus passengers will be directly affected, as the flights on that they were originally booked have been cancelled.

However, an airline spokesman said many of these passengers would be accommodated on later or earlier services.

The spokesman said that on Friday, all transatlantic services will operate but that the timing of inbound flights from the US has been altered so that they arrive in Ireland either before or after the strike.

A significant number of short-haul flights have been rescheduled to operate either before or after the action.

A spokesman for Aer Lingus said that the airline had also arranged to bring in additional flight capacity to deal with any backlog after the strike ends.