This article is from page 14 of the 2009-12-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG
FURTHER meetings are expected this week between union representa- tives of staff at Shannon airport and management at Aer Lingus.
However, there is little hope being held out that the airline might row back on plans to axe 102 jobs at the by oO a
Workers’ hopes were temporarily raised last week after the airline’s public affairs director offered up the possibility of a brighter prospect for the Shannon operations while field-
ing questions at the Dail’s public af- fairs committee.
But when Airline Chief Executive, Christoph Mueller met Dail depu- ties from Clare in the Oireachtas on Tuesday night, he gave no commit- ment on the Shannon routes, includ- ing a proposal that the New York route could be served with a smaller je) E-Nalen
Then on Wednesday, Mueller came to Shannon for a meeting with staff where workers were told that the plan to lose 102 jobs will go ahead.
IMPACT’s Neil Shanahan = said
there was “huge disappointment” among workers that no alternative to the jobs losses has been agreed.
‘They’ ve said they’re going to forge ahead with 102 job losses under the so-called Greenfield Plan. That would leave between 20 and 25 cab- in crew in Shannon and the plan for 2010 would be that they would work on the Shannon/Heathrow route.”
Mr Shanahan said there was a “lot of emotion” at the meeting and staff “were devastated because they had hoped that more would be done to save jobs.”
Union representatives said that “there are some staff there for be- tween 20 and 30 years who have been told they are going to be out of a job. They are devastated.”
Mayor of Clare, Tony Mulcahy was one of a delegation from the Mid- West Regional Authority which met with Aer Lingus management who came to Shannon last week.
The mayor said that he believes there is “substantial” new business which could be developed for Aer Lingus at the mid-west airport, with the corporate market making up a
significant part of this.
‘For the business community it 1s critical that they be able to get to Dublin and Heathrow early in the morning and get back in the evening. There is a big business community here and that is a primary issue for Weloe0e
“We are also urging Aer Lingus to look at the customs and Border Pro- tection facility. You can be left wait- ing for hours in New York and it is certainly people’s preference to pay a few euro at Shannon and cut out the wait on the other side.”