Ryanair forced to reinstate sacked striking cabin crew member

A court in Santiago de Compostela has forced Ryanair to reinstate a member of cabin crew who was fired during the 2022 strike, considering that her constitutional right to strike was violated.

In a judgment of the social court number 2 of the Galician capital, the court completely agrees with the worker and condemned Ryanair to pay her 7,501 euro as compensation, in addition to the wages from the date of dismissal, August 16, 2022.

During the crew strike in the summer of 2022, Ryanair carried out a disciplinary dismissal against this worker, as it did with other people in a similar situation.

The sentence states that in that strike Ryanair imposed minimum services with continuous changes to try to guarantee 100% of the services, for which it resorted to these modifications based on daily operations.

The fired crew member refused to accept flight changes in the minimum services assigned during several days of the strike.

“Any activity that involves a reorganisation of work, in the sense of temporary internal substitutions, empties the right to strike,” the ruling explains. In this situation, “the worker who avails herself of the right to strike is forced to comply with a company order, because if this is not the case, she may be fired, as was the case with the plaintiff.”

“This way of acting by the company makes it almost impossible to exercise the right to strike, giving priority to business activity over constitutional law,” the ruling continues. For this reason, the court understands that a fundamental right has been violated and the dismissal must be void, with reinstatement of the plaintiff.

The judgment is not final as it is possible to file an appeal against it before the Superior Court of Xustiza in Galicia.

The USO union, which promoted that strike, positively values ​​this sentence through a statement and explains that it is the first linked to those strikes, adding that there are close to fifty similar lawsuits filed against the “business model based on abusing workers and passengers” of which they accuse Ryanair.

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