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Air traffic dispute is set to escalate
Thursday, 21st January 2010 09.33am
The air traffic controllers' dispute is set to escalate, with the Impact union warning that further action is likely to happen "sooner rather than later".
Up to 20,000 passengers suffered disruption yesterday when controllers halted flights with a four hour walk out at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports.
Two more controllers were suspended yesterday, in addition to an earlier 12, for failing to co-operate with the introduction of new technology.
The controllers are to meet in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, this morning to decide their next step.
As pressure mounts on the government to intervene in the dispute, there is a growing expectations that the Labour Court will be asked to help.
In a statement ahead of this morning's union meeting the controllers' employer, the Irish Aviation Authority, said no business can have its staff dictate what work they will or will not do.
"The IAA wants full services restored as quickly as possible and calls on controllers and Impact to return to normal work so that discussions can take place," it says.
"In any such discussions, which the IAA is willing to have, the authority wants an assurance from controllers and Impact that they will link all three issues that need to be addressed: pay increase, pension contribution, and work practices. "The work that controllers are now refusing to do is work they have been doing for the last two years and were doing until three weeks ago. On January 1, 2010, they refused to continue such work. No business can have its staff dictate what work they will do and will not do, particularly in a safety-critical business such as ours. "All air traffic control systems are continuously upgraded as a matter of course. This is a high-tech service requiring ongoing technical upgrades to its systems, many of them Windows-based. "The IAA's customers - the airlines - cannot pay additional charges every time such upgrades and updates occur. The IAA receives no State aid, is funded by the airlines, and would have to pass on to the airlines the entire cost of any pay increase awarded to staff."