Ryanair and its Spanish workers have reached a contract agreement, and a strike planned for today and Sunday has been called off. The agreement must still be ratified by union members.
The two unions, SITCPLA and USO, say the deal means guaranteed job stability and better working conditions, and also meets their main demand, that cabin crew contracts for Spain must be governed by Spanish, not Irish labor law.
Until last year, Ryanair had staunchly resisted unionization of any of its employees, but changed its mind after an earlier series of strikes. But the path to agreements has been difficult, in part because it has been fragmented country by country, and with separate plans for pilots and cabin crew, and in part because Ryanair has tried to maintain Irish, rather than local, labor laws as the basis of contracts because Ireland’s are considered more employer-friendly.
After a series of strikes over the past year across the continent, agreements have been reached in Britain, Germany, Portugal and Italy in addition to Spain, which is Ryanair’s third-biggest market.
