Ryanair Cabin Crew Agree Pay Cuts To Save Jobs

Budget airline Ryanair has agreed to retain the jobs of all UK-based cabin crew in return for pay cuts, it was announced by trade unions on Wednesday.

The deal, which will see salary reductions of up to 10 percent spread over four years, has been agreed by Ryanair members of the Unite union following a vote.

"Unite has been contending with an incredibly difficult set of circumstances in the aviation sector," Diana Holland, the union's assistant general secretary said in a statement.

"The agreement with Ryanair shows that the company has taken a more constructive and less damaging approach to dealing with the issues than many of its competitor airlines."

The deal for cabin crew follows a similar agreement announced between the Dublin-based no-frills Irish carrier and a separate union, Balpa, in which pilots agreed to a 20 percent pay cut to save jobs, although there could still be some redundancies among flying staff.

And it comes after a Ryanair announcement in May that the airline was planning to cut 3,000 jobs because of the collapse of the aviation industry in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this month, Ryanair said its passenger numbers for June had fallen by 97 percent.

It carried 400,000 passengers in June 2020 compared to 14.2 million in the same month 12 months earlier.

The deal for Ryanair staff comes amid uncertainty for other airlines including British Airways which has announced the possibility of 12,000 job cuts.