A new legal strike against Ryanair for violating the right to strike and freedom of association in Spain. The Supreme Court has upheld the National Court’s conviction of the Irish low-cost airline due to the “seriousness” of its conduct in trying to reduce strikes called by the USO and SITCPLA cabin crew unions in the summer of 2022 and January 2023. For this reason, the multinational owes compensation to both labor organizations in the amount of €187,515 in moral damages.
The ruling, issued last November, confirms how Ryanair recorded meetings of union members to collect evidence against them, which the court did not accept, as well as changing minimum services and resorting to scabs – replacing striking workers with others – to limit the impact of the alleged strikes, among other practices.
The Supreme Court recalls that in 2023, the same court convicted Ryanair for very similar conduct that violated the right to strike and freedom of association in the 2019 strikes, for which it imposed €30,000 compensation on the unions. For this reason, the total damages imposed in this new ruling are much higher, because “those damages have not performed their protective function because the same company continues to engage in conduct that violates the same fundamental rights,” the ruling said.
Despite Ryanair’s complaints, the Supreme Court justices upheld the national court’s standards and concluded that “the amount of compensation for moral damages established by the lower court cannot be considered excessive, unfair, disproportionate or unreasonable.”
USO-Air Sector, although “satisfied” with the ruling, holds that “the right to strike in this country is essentially limited to arbitrary minimum services which, although subsequently reviewed in the injunction, arrive too late in their compensation since the observed conduct is called into question too late.” “Therefore, delayed justice loses its value,” laments the union, which had already denounced during the strike in 2022 the violation of minimum services by the airline.
Ryanair recorded workers’ gatherings
The ruling reflects that Ryanair agreed to and recorded the USO union’s meetings with workers about the development of the strike days. “Ryanair DAC was able to access, record and contribute to the recording process of those gatherings where, in their view, expressions were expressed that encouraged attendees not to adhere to the minimum services.”
The National Court did not accept these recordings because it considered that they violated freedom of association, and in response to Ryanair’s application to the Supreme Court to use these recordings, the Supreme Court judges upheld the court’s standards.
If recordings of worker assemblies made by companies during strikes are admitted into evidence, the ruling says, “for the purpose of proving statements made by union members therein to the detriment of their unions, freedom of association will be restricted, to the extent that, in future assemblies of workers during strikes, interventions by union members and other workers will be conditional on the probative value of said recordings to their detriment.”
“The above-mentioned assemblies, although held electronically in an open manner, were aimed at Ryanair DAC workers, not Ryanair DAC, which contacted them without inviting them,” the judges stressed.
Changes in minimum services and mange
The Supreme Court also confirms that the protected flights were subject to arbitrary changes by the company, which informed workers that they could take disciplinary action, such as dismissal. In this context of strikes, Ryanair fired several workers, including prominent union members who had called strikes. The Supreme Court warns that some of these dismissals, such as that of a flight attendant in Galicia, are null and void.
Through the actions taken by the Labor Inspectorate in several cities affected by the strikes, the courts are investigating practices that violate the minimum services imposed by the Transport Authority, with constant changes in protected flights, which are communicated to employees even on days of rest and holidays. As well as what is called “internal retribution,” where the employer uses his company’s workers to replace strikers, thus violating their right to strike. In this case, an inspection at several bases found that Ryanair used “crews based in third countries” to operate flights during stops in Spain.
“They reveal a pattern of business behavior during the days of the strike consisting of changing minimum services with short notice, assigning flights different from those initially indicated by sending mass communications, without respecting the minimum notice and without indicating that the new assigned flights are part of the minimum services. These changes were also made during vacations and during crew rest periods. The changes were repeated up to six times a day,” the judges assert.
The Supreme Court concluded that Ryanair “not only carried out measures similar to the company’s normal operations” but “attempted to minimize” the consequences of the strike by making a range of changes to minimum services, thus “violating the fundamental rights of strike action and freedom of association”.