Ryanair has done a major u-turn on its policy with regards to unions in an effort to avoid its pilots striking next week.
Despite earlier saying it was ignoring strike threats, and sticking to its longheld policy of not recognising unions, it has now written to pilots in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal inviting them to talks to recognise these unions.
The airline is agreeing to recognise unions as long as they establish Committees of Ryanair pilots to deal with Ryanair issues, saying ‘Ryanair will not engage with pilots who fly for competitor airlines in Ireland or elsewhere’.
"Ryanair will now change its long standing policy of not recognising unions in order to avoid any threat of disruption to its customers and its flights from pilot unions during Christmas week," it said.
It called on pilot unions to call off the threatened industrial action for Wednesday December 20.
Chief executive Michael O’Leary said: "Christmas flights are very important to our customers and we wish to remove any worry or concern that they may be disrupted by pilot industrial action next week.
"If the best way to achieve this is to talk to our pilots through a recognised union process, then we are prepared to do so, and we have written today to these unions inviting them to talks to recognise them and calling on them to cancel the threatened industrial action planned for Christmas week.
"Recognising unions will be a significant change for Ryanair, but we have delivered radical change before, most recently when we launched Ryanair Labs and our highly successful Always Getting Better customer improvement programme in 2013.
"Putting the needs of our customers first, and avoiding disruption to their Christmas flights, is the reason why we will now deal with our pilots through recognised national union structures and we hope and expect that these structures can and will be agreed with our pilots early in the New Year."
Ryanair has refused to recognise unions since it was founded 32 years ago.
