Ryanair Pilots 3 weeks away from union recognition
 

I hear that the number of pilot joining Balpa are rapidly increasing this week.
Balpa are boasting of record numbers of pilots in the last 69 years.
I also hear ryanair is about three weeks away from union recognition??
Lets get the deal we deserve...

If Ryanair recognise unions I'll eat my elephant ! Never ever happen.

Hansol,
better fire up that barbie so, because micko and dobber disagree with you.

Of course they will deal with BALPA & IALPA if they have to :cool: - despite what the dobber says.

If they don't engage with them when the pay negotiations come up again next year, the ballot papers will go out - and then the White House faces two options:

1) Explain to the shareholders that RYR now deals with UK & Irish unions - hard to do, but...

2) Explain to the shareholders that RYR still doesn't deal with unions, and, BTW, those tickets booked out of STN, DUB, PIK & LPL can be swapped for tickets from EMA & LTN for a fee of only 5£... why? Oh, we just think your chances of being on a moving aircraft will increase proportinally with your willingness to use the sca...ahem, I mean our valued employees based at those airports :p A lot harder to explain, IMHO...

But wadda I know? I'm just an overpaid bus driver, after all.

Union recognition at ryanair UK bases will come,,, the speed at which it is achieved will depend on the level of membership and how quickly the required amount is reached.
At the moment in the main UK base stansted there is a push for new comers to join. Mainly cadets and SO as most new Captains and FO are already in a union or are smart enough to know whats good for them.
To all new comers to ryanair i for one urge each and everyone of you to consider your future in this industry, cast a eye over such company's as easy-jet and BA to see what a good union body can achieve and join BALPA as soon as possible. If you find yourself in a position of being unable to pay the amount required to join then you should discuss this with the BALPA rep. I am sure that you will find them more than accommodating.
The future of ryanair is without a doubt bright, lets make sure the future of ryanair pilots is equally as bright.
GO REPA
GO IALPA, BALPA

This may be a naieve question, so I apologise in advance.

What legal standing does the BRITISH Airline Pilots Association have w.r.t an IRISH registered airline which operates under a "foreign" AOC? Additionally, if the union is not recognised by the Company, how can any "notification of dispute" (or whatever it's called) be served upon the Company.

Good luck to all in RYR - we look on with interest.

A4

From the moment of 'formally' walking through the door the recognition process takes several weeks so there's no way it's 3 weeks away - that's just wishful thinking I'm afraid.

I hope it does come soon enough for you though as I think you guys really need the support.

Just remember. Every member needs to go and recruit one more member and it will happen.

Good luck guys.

A4 Ryanair Pilots in the UK are different from Ryanair Pilots at all the Euro Bases in that they are on UK contracts. For the avoidance of doubt as our Eddie would say : PIK, LPL, EMA, LTN, STN are employed under the provisions of UK employment law. They are employed by Ryanair UK and not Ryanair Ltd. Ireland.

If UK bases are under the provisions of UK employment law, surely all UK pilots have had their basic rights under health and safety regualations taken away by Ryanair when they stopped providing fresh drinking water to crews. They say they get round this by providing fresh water in the crew room. Sorry, I thought my work place was the flight deck and not spending a 10 hour duty back at base. I suffered quite serious health problems as a result of drinking galley water for a few years that required numerous hospital treatments. I was very tempted with legal action when I was at FR. I think pilots should consider a claim as their basic human rights have been breached. I think the average pilot will be able to take .5L of water in their bag. This is in no way sufficient for a typical duty. Of course you don't have time to pop into the crew room to top up as you spend 15-20 mins standing outside making sure the fuel chap doesn't set himself alight. Could someone enlighten me on the above employment law regulations as I'm pretty sure they have been ignored, but if anyone knows better?

Interesting... If you are required by Ryanair management to take your own bottle of water after filling it up on the 'free' water provided in the crew room, how do you get more than about 400ml past security? I assume you take your swigs from the 4 individual 100ml bottles in your transparent plastic bag. :confused:

Can anyone confirm whether the no water from the on-board supplies edict is still in place? That tight fisted one and the one about not charging your mobile phones in the office! :hmm:

You bring in an empty bottle through security to get airside, fill whatever size bottle you have in the crewroom (airside) and make it last for 10-12 hours. You can buy water on board from the bar at hugely inflated prices providing they haven't run out, or drink not quite boiling water from the galley. Can you imagine the 9-5 office brigade having to put up with what we do. Arrive at office with packed lunch, then have a security guard search you, confiscate any liquid/yoghurt/smoothie. Once at your desk fill up a bottle of water, then remain sat down for a 12 hour shift with no breaks. If you want the loo, then put your hand up and wait till everyone is sat and a colleague stands at your door (may take 20 mins). If you don't have enough to drink and eat after security steal and eat your food, tough! No-one would put up with it. Health and safety, unions, workers up in arms. Put on an airline uniform and it becomes a normal day.

Never ever ever ever my Jumbo is safe.

I have a question for THE POINTY END

Are you able to elaborate on the health effects of this water a little?

I know this is not "Ryanair unions" so I have started another thread on the topic of free water.

What ever happened to union recognition in 3 weeks? Whats the latest? or are the pilots continuing in time honoured ryanair fashion to take it up the jacksie? :eek:

yeah, good question

when you look at the date of the original post it kinda says it all. why do you make posts like this 'sausage fingers'? was there any basis to what you posted at the time? i'm not saying it was you who was creating spin but would love to know who misinformed you in the first place so we could all be warey of that person or, indeed, body of persons

Very sad. Evil triumphs when good men (& women) stand idly by. Curser

Just remember that because not all pilots are based in the UK, does not mean they cannot be members of Balpa and therefore vote along with all the UK pilots. This is the situation in easyJet, which has had Balpa recogntion for about 7 years, but is increasingly opening up European bases in addition to the many UK bases it already has. In fact, I believe the German based pilots are members of the German pilot Union, which also recognises Balpa and they become by default members of that union also. This strengthens considerably our clout and membership levels and means that it is not just the UK based pilots that are represented at pay deals and potential industrial action.

Camel eats Elephant.
 

Oh goodie, we can make a party of it! Don't worry, Hansol. I'll be there with a napkin in my collar to help you digest that pachyderm if needs be. But I don't think so, somehow.

It ain't gunna happen. Not now, not ever. The day of the pilot union is long passed, like yesterday’s !!!!.

Wake up and smell the Elephant dung, all you new arrivals. You have your jobs precisely BECAUSE Ryanair is not infested with the radiant fecklessness of unions. It would be the apotheosis of stupidity to put all you've achieved at risk by succumbing to these few proselytising nincompoops and their empty promises.

Ryanair is a threat to the existence of many legacy carriers all over Europe. If you're smart enough to get into Ryanair, you're smart enough to know when you're being Duchessed by dingbats of the dispossessed. Get with the strength and give the flick to those who seek to cage our mighty Irish Gorilla, and reflect for a moment on how nice it is to be on a winning team.

Speaking of Elephant dung............

Is LHC for real?

Quote:

---

Get with the strength and give the flick to those who seek to cage our mighty Irish Gorilla, and reflect for a moment on how nice it is to be on a winning team

---

Hmm.. is that right hairy. Winning team? Have you ever seen a team win long term with extremely low moral?

Moral is so low in FR that pilots are leaving hand over fist every week. Crew control are calling pilots every week begging them to work days off, and although the management try to give the hard nosed impression that they couldn't care less that there is a pilot exodus, they do.

They say they don't care because they can be easily replaced.. Not so. The conditions and moral are so low and so widely known no one except the desperate wannabe with 20k to pay to work, would touch FR with a barge pole from now on.

You and your managements dictatorship are coming to an end hairy. Shame because if you were just a little bit kinder to your employees then you would be even richer, and not thought of by the general public as the scummiest airline in Europe.

You think that your most senior captains and trainers love Ryanair? No. I know many that are looking to get out.

Nobody in their right mind, except the desperate would want to work for FR hairy. The dreadfully low Pilot moral could cause an accident, I sincerely hope not, but if it does, you and your henchmen will be to blame. :yuk:

Oh deary, deary me, I see our friend Leo is still sprouting his ideological claptrap. How come Ryanair has to resort to all sorts of tricks to entrap new (and sometimes frighteningly innocent) pilots..... not to mention how come Ryanair "the High Pay airline" has such a high pilot turnover? (Industry leaders, by far).

Answer: it does not matter since there appear to be enough pilots out there who believe what Leo and his ilk have to say. Hard to believe ..... but true. But at least those pilots will pay for their sins. Ryanair will certainly ensure that!

Ban the f***ker.
Why is he even tolerated on a so-called 'Professional Pilots' website?
:mad: :mad: :mad:

Capt K.....as a much as I disagree with the camel, its a forum open to all.

Shouldn't ban him, that's crazy. I actually quite enjoy his lunatic ravings, mind you I don't have to work there.

It's always better to have these types of social misfits in the public domain rather than underground, for example it's good to know exactly just how odious someone's opinions are so you can avoid or argue as you see fit. eg Nazis, Pro-lifers, Kiddy Fiddlers etc, etc.

Keep 'em coming Leo.

Let him rant. He knows he is getting stuck for crews and thats why he is sitting down seven aircraft this winter. He will blame everybody else but we know the truth, you spanner.

FAO Dan Winterland
 

Is LHC for real?

Rumour has it, he's not just real, he's the Original Captain O'Leary...

Make of that what you will.

The penny drops!
 

Well, it is an anagram of MOL. So if it looks like a camel, sounds like a camel and smells like a camel - it probably is an Irish low cost airline CEO!

Either that or a very good wind up merchant!

For a really good wind up merchant, have a look at posts regarding Cathay Pacific on the Fragrant Harbour forum from a contributer called 'The Management'. Very funny. But don't look if you're the CEO of a low cost airline - it may give you ideas!

The day of pilot the union has not gone, and their finest hour is fast approaching! Ryanair pilots are beginning to realise that strength in numbers is the only way forward and strike action is the only way to have your grievances heard.

Union recognition and strike action are two completely separate items. Lumping the two together gets the pilot body nowhere fast.
First things first, however, the first step will be the most difficult, if not impossible.

Union recognition:

The 'rules' are that to go along the Statutory route establishing Union recognition in Ryanair, BALPA must secure a majority vote in favour. No problem there you might think. However, the total voting must be at least 40% of the pilot workforce. Now I don't know the distribution of the BALPA members in Ryanair but I would be most surprised if BALPA can get even close to that 40% requirement. We might have 60% BALPA membership in UK but that is not the point. The total is the critical figure.

Our non-European cousins in Ryanair are unlikely to be even in the loop about the problems Ryanair pilots have been facing for so long. They are almost certainly not BALPA members.

Individuals can jump up and down as much as they like, but to blame BALPA misses the point. They are powerless because the legislation in the UK does not allow a workforce to vote for collective bargaining unless they are members of a recognised Trade Union.

It is a chicken and egg situation.

There is no reasonble way to resolve this and MOL knows it.

BALPA will simply never get a foot in the door in Dublin, no matter what happens in BALPA or among the pilots. We are being fooled and misled, much like the infantry in the trenches in WW 1.

Doom and gloom I'm afraid!

Ah LHC,

It's been a while.

Of course Ryanair will win out in the end, like they won all those court cases in Ireland. No hang on didn't they lose all of those cases but claimed each and every one as a victory?

Funny old world.

I think, sadly, that rubik101 is on the right lines there.

There has not been a peep from Balpa since just after the last round of 'negotiations' in March. They have opened an office in STN, but I gather that they are mainly helping people get out of Ryanair! Or just trying to make reassuring noises when needs be.

I know they are having to wait for enough members to join before they can go ahead with union recognition, but it's a catch 22 situation. People won't join until they see something happeneing from Balpa, and Balpa can't do anything until the pilots sort themselves out.:ugh::(

I'm still 100% behind Balpa, but for the time being I won't be holding my breath. I'll just have make my mind up about what I'm going to do next. Just like the song says, 'Should I stay or should I go?'

As for the Labour Court, the less said the better!!!!:{

Ryan seems to get a lot of flak. Not entirely fair perhaps when one thinks what the pilot employement scene and opportunities might look like had they and the other Low Costs got going in the first place. They have expanded the industry and generated travel demand enormously and killed off the stranglehold of those old IATA regulated fares and with their success has come jobs.

Not so Skylion. Do your homework. IATA estimates, dating from mid-90's, of traffic growth until 2010 are broadly in line with what actually happened. What ryr have done is remove the jobs that would have been there anyway from well-paid airlines and created them instead in a low pay environment. In fact, the overall number of jobs for the same traffic would have been higher as ryr crew tighter than others. So in fact ryr have actually removed jobs from the market.
You obviously don't recall the buoyant late-90's jobs market when pay was much higher and self funded ratings unknown (even at ryr).
Amazing what you learn when you do some research and not make sweeping statements unfounded in reality!

Unfortunately the statistics you mention are very one dimensional and don't tell the full story. Can you imagine BA, whose accountants will always say that they will always make more out of an aircraft based at LHR than in the provinces building up the incredible network the UK now has of regional point to point domestics and to secondart and tertiary points in Europe? Absolutely no chance. They had tremendous opportunities out of BHX, MAN, EDI and GLA for decades and what did they do with them? The only real creativity has come from their excellent franchises , who I should have mentioned in the original posting.On long haul, who has built up the still relatively small number of services ex the UK? BA ? No, thanks to the newcomers who even if foreign based (eg the Gulf based carriers), UK pilots now have a range of possible employers, lifestyles,aircraft types and bases undreamed of 15 years ago and are no longer faced with largely monopoly scheduled carriers or the orginal charters. They now have an excellent choice of the sort of UK company they want to work for, the lifestyle , location etc. and the sandpit long haul newcomers have added to the variety.

Last week I was 'temporarily banned' from this thread because I expressed my opinion that LHC should be banned from this website.

I was told the exact reasons for the ban were "LHC is a pilot and his opinion is as valid as yours".

I have two comments.

So LHC is a pilot?
Well, that'll come as a big surprise to many of the posters on this BB who seem to labour under the impression that he is something entirely different! From the certainty expressed in my little wrist slap, it is clear that Danny and his little helpers know more about LHC than they are letting on.
Why don't they come clean and tell us exactly what they know?

As regards LHCs 'opinions' being 'equally valid'....I've seen numereous threads on this BB where posters claimed the right to state their opinions in the name of free speech, only to be slapped down by a mod reminding them that this is not a "Free Speech forum", that this is Dannys trainset, and if you don't like his policies then get lost.

Interesting then, how LHC is given free and unfettered access to express his anti-pilot opinions on this 'Professional Pilots' bulletin board!

Certainly his right to free speech and hold outrageous opinions is upheld above all others. The same rules don't apply to Leo.

Well, fair enough! Thanks for making that crystal clear.

LHC is allowed his 'opinions' that pilots are 'headbangers' etc (even though he is one too?:rolleyes:) but don't dare object, Mr.Pilot!
That will earn you a ban!

Professional Pilots network?
What hypocrisy. Its nothing of the sort and we all know it.

well said capt kremin

can you rewrite the e-mail and replace lhc for 411a and thats all the bases covered!!

was banned also for going against the camel.don't bother me none,all the best critics are banned from one time to another.would be pissed off if i did not get banned.still right behind you,camel.

I would like to reassure anyone who is under the impression that I am LHC in disguise, please believe me when I say that I am not he! I wrote my piece because that is the way I see it. I have researched the RYR pilots position and spoken to ACAS who tell me that they have very little chance of getting anywhere with thei 'dispute'. The reason being that the pilots are fragmented, dispersed and have never managed to get any collective bargaining regime in place that has been effective in the past.
I only tell it how I see it.

I would be delighted to see BALPA or anyone else clobber the crap out of the management bullies who try to run the pilots into the ground.

And then a start can be made on the poor, exploited, underpaid and downtrodden cabin crew! 6 on 2 off and the pilots complain about their rosters!!!

Rubik, I met you in one of your recent lives and can verify your claim - certainly no management stooge but a wise and considered contributer to this forum.

I frequently meet ex colleagues in the car park and one in particular is always telling me how fed he is with all the hassles and injustices at FR and how much he wants to leave - yet he's still there 8 years later!

I always assumed that it was cash that stopped FR guys from moving over to EZY, yet it's no longer the case that they are better paid; even less so when one adds up the other benefits.

I suspect that most FR guys rather enjoy being "victims" - it's a well known psychological affliction - they might find that life would simply be too good elsewhere and they wouldn't have enough to feel bad about!