A pilot with Ryanair has secured a temporary High Court injunction restraining the company from conducting disciplinary proceedings against him.
Mr John Goss, Yellow Walls Road, Malahide, Co Dublin, had secured the temporary order on Wednesday and when the matter was mentioned before the court again yesterday, Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan adjourned it to February 28th after being told Ryanair wished to reply to Mr Goss's claims. She continued the injunction to then.
In an affidavit, Mr Goss said he had been a Ryanair employee since 1986. He said his terms and conditions of employment had been amended a number of times and in a manner that was unclear. As a result, he was unsure as to what precisely were his present terms and conditions of employment.
Ryanair had declined to recognise trade unions on the basis of a policy to deal directly with their employees, which he found unsatisfactory, he said.
Mr Goss had joined the Irish Airline Pilots' Association (IALPA), a branch of the IMPACT union, and he instructed IALPA to seek to enter negotiations with a view to reaching agreement on a number of matters of concern to himself and fellow pilots.
Ryanair chief executive Mr Michael O'Leary had declined to enter into such negotiations and IMPACT had referred the dispute to the Labour Relations Commission.
On November 4th, 2004, Mr Goss and other Dublin pilots were asked by Ryanair to attend a meeting at which they were threatened that if the trade union activities did not cease, they would be excluded from any pay increase, from Ryanair's share option scheme, from promotion, and insurance for loss of pilot's licence would be cancelled.
He said they were threatened that they would be required to pay €15,000 training costs and would be required to pay for future recurrent training. They were also told they might be excluded from certain privileges and might face compulsory redundancy.
On November 12th, Mr Goss said he and seven other senior pilots got a letter from Ryanair offering a place on a conversion training course for new aircraft but requiring him to pay €15,000 training costs back to Ryanair if he left Ryanair's employment within five years or if Ryanair was "compelled to engage in collective bargaining with any pilot association or trade union".