Ryanair dispute closes Dublin airport

A dispute between SIPTU, Ireland's largest trade union, and the independent airline, Ryanair, over union recognition for 39 workers led to the closure of Dublin Airport over the weekend of 7-8 March 1998 as thousands of unionised employees working for state-owned companies refused to pass pickets.

A dispute by 39 baggage handlers at the Ryanair independent airline, agitating for trade union recognition (IE9802141F), escalated into a major national crisis over the weekend of 7-8 March 1998. Thousands of members of the SIPTU trade union in the public sector refused to pass official pickets, leading to the virtual shutdown of Dublin Airport.

The crisis forced the Irish Government to act by setting up a two-person special investigating team to examine all aspects of the dispute. The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern personally contacted the Ryanair chief executive, Michael O' Leary, to secure his agreement to cooperate with the investigation. SIPTU had earlier indicated that it would welcome the move.

However, the dispute remains intractable as Ryanair is determined not to recognise SIPTU - Ireland's largest union - insisting that its remaining 960 employees are happy with direct management-employee communications.

The Government's two-person team - Phil Flynn, former president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and Dan McCauley, director general of the Federated Union of Employers (now part of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation) - faces a formidable task. They know that both sides hold implacably opposed positions, although they are likely to note the fact that the company already negotiates with its unionised pilots through a pilot-elected committee. This amounts to what some commentators have described as a "halfway house" form of union recognition.

Meanwhile, the fate of the top-level report into the issue of trade union recognition has effectively been sealed by the Ryanair dispute. The report (IE9803114F), which emerged in early January 1998, was drawn up by a high-level group established under Partnership 2000, the current three year national partnership agreement. The group is made up of Government officials, job creation agencies, and employer and trade union representatives.

The report advocates a continuation of Ireland's voluntarist tradition in dealing with the problem of recognition, albeit within a more refined set of procedures, but the Ryanair dispute has had the direct effect of forcing the ICTU to "refer back" the report to the high-level group for further consideration. The report is also expected to draw sharp criticism at trade union conferences later in 1998, and calls for a mandatory solution are likely to be heard.