Ryanair France demands 20% pay cut for flight-crew to avoid redundancies
 

In today's Guardian, proposed 20% cut for flight-crew and 10% for cabin-crew, to be raised back to current level by 2025.

Can't post link. Search for Ryanair France redundancy blackmail

This article;

https://www.theguardian.com/business...20July%202025.

This story said that MOL himself took a 50% pay cut already. Although 50% of his salary may mean less to him than 20% does to flight-crew or 10% does to cabin-crew.

Unfortunately this will be happening within many airlines and other industries as well.

2025? That is a loooong time.....

@jmmoric yes that is a long time. Also, it is not clear what 'current level' means:

If not adjusted for inflation, 'current level' could be substantially less in 5 years time than it is worth today.

Right now, hardly any opportunities exist even for rated and highly experienced pilots. Most companies don't even accept applications any longer as hundreds of unneeded CVs represent no value in times like this. And, unfortunately, that will most probably be the case until late 2020 or early 2021 in the most optimistic scenario. And even then, there will be far less openings than candidates for quite a while. So, for now, almost every deal is a good one. Especially considering that a pilot salary reduced by 20% will still be more than what you are likely to get in any of the ground jobs you can realistically get without relevant experience. I wouldn't worry too much about the prospects into 2025 right now. Whenever things pick up and alternative, better-paid opportunities start coming up and cause a mass exodus of everyone considering themselves underpaid, T&Cs will inevitably be reviewed towards more favorable ones. It has happened a number of times, it will happen again.

That is being proposed across the whole network to those directly employed. Every single country. Also, in some video conference they stated that taking a 20%-10% pay cut will NOT rule out redundancies and future recruitment.

Contractors already got a 20% pay cut addendum as a take it now or your contract will be immediately terminated.

Right now, the chance of a 20% cut to stay in employment against dig your heels in and end up joining the thousands of unemployed pilots looking for jobs, a 20% pay cut sounds a good deal.

Go tell Malta based crews that signed the “good deal” and still got fired.

Sounds as if MOL will offer that to all pilots then .... accept 5 year pay cut .... or he willl fire all pilots ...then re-employ only those he wants or needs.
Nasty .

The across the board paycut was certainly what MoL said on the Robert Peston Show a couple of nights back, with lesser cuts to the lower paid. He also got asked about his own pay and claimed that he was leading from the front with a 50% paycut. Should be available on ITVPlayer somewhere if you want to watch it.

"Go tell Malta based crews that signed the “good deal” and still got fired."

Did it make any difference in lay-off terms signing or not ?

Very true, and I am sure many will take it.

Monarch asked us to take a supposedly temporary 10% pay cut (after a difficult summer), that would supposedly be paid back*, which the majority voted for. We all kept our jobs, but it only delayed the subsequent failing of the company. I would bet money that the 20% pay cut cited here will never be restored in future years.

If I was in Ryanair and asked to take this pay cut, I probably would, but I would also start re-training for a non-flying job, and tightening my belt, finance-wise. The flying might continue for a couple more years - until the next crisis, or downward push on wages - during which time one could gain a new qualification.

*I took the 2 months off option instead, so at least I got something in return for my pay cut :)

Well one might carefully argue that if everyone collectively said no Ryanair would have to rethink the strategy. This might require a unionised workforce which seem to be an issue for Ryanair employees. Ryanair are expanding in France and the French media is already discussing the blackmail tactics of the company to introduce payouts. It will not be easy for Malta Air to fire and rehire in the same bases under the scrutiny of the French government that is paying for the furlough for these pilots.

Supply and demand. The best contracts and the best deals for cadets and non-rated crew were offered in the 2016-2018 period, when RYR had a great demand for crew at many bases. Even type ratings funded by the company, something that had been unheard of ever since in RYR, went big at some point. That was all culled by the 737MAX crisis in 2019 and further hamstrung by the lack of demand for flying in 2020. Now, as the boot is on the other foot and you would be lucky to have any paid flying job, T&Cs are going back down. Type ratings will likely become self-funded again as well. All that until they start experiencing a shortage of personnel again. Which I don't see happening for at least 2 or 3 years from now, until all the unemployed 737 drivers out there get jobs. And there are loads of them now, especially in the light of the situation in Norwegian.

This is why other airlines have unions and collective contracts in place. There has to be a balance between supply and demand and job security and common decency. Ryanair is not a failing company. They’ll be hitting record profits from next year and onwards until the next major crisis but their crew will be taking a 5 year paycut in the meantime. This is blackmail and extortion tactics which has to be stopped or there’ll be nothing left to fight for. Even throughout the good years Ryanair didn’t increase terms and conditions for their experienced crew and they will not do it when things pick back up.

Ryanair has also got unions and collective contracts in place. Covid-19 has brought airlines down to their knees so I doubt there will be any record profits next year or the year after. Terms and conditions in Ryanair did increase over the last few years so you seem to be misinformed.

Well if Ryanair doesn’t end up with a very healthy profit for next year I’ll be happy to say I was wrong.

When you write your terms improved I suppose you are referring to the collective agreements agreed in France and Italy primarily? I have first hand knowledge with these. The French contract is worth 30 percent less than the equivalent easyJet one. You wonder how the conditions are so much worse for a pilot doing exactly the same job in the same base, flying the same routes in a similar size aircraft.. and now a 20 percent reduction. Sorry but explaining it with supply and demand as it is somehow reasonable is the reason why Rayanair pilots are in this situation in the first place.
It’s a difficult situation for everyone and I hope the Ryanair pilots will fight for their terms and conditions that they’ve earned like everyone else.

I'll say the exact same thing I said in the Norweigen thread.. RYR pilots were happy to turn a blind eye to every shyster move their employer used in bases accross Europe over the last decade to divide and conquer the employees and drive down T & C's accross the whole continent. Don't come looking to the rest of us for sympathy when the chickens come home to roost. It's like the expat pilots crying foul in the Saudi thread, it's all good in the boom times and screw everyone else, until it isn't.