57 Dublin-based CityJet pilots have been told they're facing redundancy.
They staged a protest at the airline's headquarters in Swords this afternoon.
Additionally, the pilots are accusing CityJet of "offshoring" their jobs.
The company have described this as "grossly misleading and inaccurate."
CityJet say around 20 staff, who are qualified to fly the CRJ type aircraft, have been offered posts in Denmark.
Executive Chairman Pat Byrne says the other 34 are trained on aircraft that the company don't have contracts for anymore:
"So we have no activity now in Dublin for flying. At all."
"We have our administration, we have our operations support for our European operations all based in Dublin."
"We have no flying jobs with flights originating out of Dublin anymore since the Aer Lingus contract was terminated."
"Therefore, for those 34 pilots, basically there is no future on that aircraft type."
"In fact there's no activity in Dublin."
Forsa Trade Union Engaging With CityJet
Forsa Trade Union Official Ian McDonnell has been engaging with the company in an effort to reduce the number of redundancies.
He says the company will hire people from outside the state to staff their routes instead.
"You have an Irish registered company, choosing to operate out of Ireland."
"They are taking a position whereby it's going to make all of it's pilots working from Ireland redundant."
"But they are at the same time admitting that they'll have to recruit very quickly in other jurisdictions to fly out of their other bases."
"So there is a danger then that they could take this opportunity to let go all of these pilots and recruit elsewhere on far lesser terms and conditions."
CityJet "Reneged" On Promises To Keep Some Staff On
Forsa's Ian McDonnell says the redundancies come despite pilots offering to take a temporary 50 per cent wage cut.
"We have been engaging on them in methodologies and proposals to negate or remove some of those redundancies."
"We had got to the point where CityJet said up to 23 of our pilots employed there were no longer under the threat of redundancy."
"However they reneged on those promises a little over a week ago."
However that clashes with the company saying that around 20 pilots have been offered full time work in Copenhagen.
The offer has not been accepted by any staff members yet but talks are ongoing this week.
Photo: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie
