Unlawful Dismissal: Court says Ryanair must pay ex-employees €600,000 compensation
A Kaunas District Court has ruled that 10 employees of Ryanair were illegally dismissed in June 2020 and that the carrier must pay the group over €600,000 as a result. The case centers on Ryanair’s decision to terminate its operations in Lithuania at the time, citing organizational changes in response to the impact of COVID-19.
Corporate re-arrangements
During some of the worst months of the pandemic, it appears that Ryanair (the Irish airline of the group) was looking to reduce its footprint and lower its costs. To reach this goal, the carrier sought to close its base in Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania.
According to Delfi, Ryanair transferred its Kaunas-based employees to London Stansted Airport- something that the employees claim they never agreed to. When employees failed to come to work (at Stansted) after being transferred, the carrier dismissed the Lithuanian employees in June of 2020.
Despite closing its Kaunas base, it appears that the same operations continued through the airline’s relatively new Polish subsidiary, Buzz- legally known as Ryanair Sun at the time. This would become a key aspect in the court’s decision to side with the ex-employees.
An illegal transfer to London?
The Lithuanian court is siding with the former Ryanair workers, ordering the carrier to pay out €600,000 in compensation. The main claim for dismissal sought the average wage for the period from the time of dismissal to the date of enforcement of the judgment, up to a maximum of one year.
The court ruled that the Irish airline had illegally transferred workers to London Stansted Airport without accounting for the personal situations of the workers. Indeed, employees were required by contract to live within one hour’s distance from Kaunas airport.
The employees in question had already settled in and lived in Lithuania for many years, having already had families and children there. The court ruled that relocation to Stansted would have negatively impacted the employees and that Ryanair did not assess these personal circumstances.
At the same time, the airline transferred part of its operations at Kaunas airport to a company belonging to the same group. The case did, however, show that employees had every opportunity to be transferred to work for Ryanair’s Polish subsidiary, which took over the business of the Irish company at Kaunas Airport.
Bottom line: A cost-reduction attempt gone wrong?
Reviewing the case, it appears that Ryanair was hoping to lower its costs while still maintaining operations to the city of Kaunas using its Poland-based subsidiary. The transfer of employees to Stansted could be seen by some as a way to encourage workers to quit of their own volition or else provide the carrier grounds for dismissal should they not turn up for work at their new base. This is, however, purely speculation and a theorization.
At the same time, it would appear that the airline group was hoping to reduce costs by operating similar services using Polish workers via its Poland-based subsidiary instead.
While both Lithuania and Poland are member states of the European Union, Lithuania has adopted the euro as its currency, while Poland maintains its use of the złoty. Most comparison sites agree that the cost of living in Poland is lower than in Lithuania.
