Most Aer Lingus ground crews have rejected the airline’s offer of a 4 per cent pay rise in a vote completed on Thursday.
Members of trade union Siptu at the airline have been voting on for the past two weeks on the offer, which the company has tied to extra productivity, in separate ballots across the country.
Union officials and the company confirmed on Thursday that most groups, barring some workers in Shannon, and maintenance and engineering staff, rejected the deal.
Terry Gill, Siptu aviation industrial organiser, estimated that more than 90 per cent of members voted to reject the offer.
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Siptu represents around 1,200 workers at the airline. The union ran 10 different ballots as the company was seeking different concessions from separate groups of workers in return for the proposed pay rise.
[ Aer Lingus cabin crew union tells members to reject 4% pay increaseOpens in new window ]
The union will now wait for the outcome of a ballot of 2,000 cabin crew, members of Fórsa, which is due next week.
Fórsa officials have already recommended that crew reject the Aer Lingus offer.
Mr Gill said Siptu is likely to seek further talks with airline management next week, after the cabin crew ballot is completed.
“We will go back to the company and see where those talks take us,” he confirmed.
Aer Lingus welcomed votes in favour of the deal by Shannon ramp loaders and maintenance and engineering staff.
The airline added that it “notes the outcome of the ballot of other ground operations staff” while cabin crew are also voting.
“In October 2025, staff across operations in Aer Lingus will receive a 1.5 per cent pay increase,” said the company.
“This is the final payment in the existing agreement covering January 2023 to December 2025, comprising a total increase of 13.75 per cent over that period.”
The 4 per cent offered following talks with union representatives will bring the total increase over four years to 17.75 per cent, in line with the deal done with pilots following industrial action last year, it added.
Aer Lingus argued that the extra 4 per cent offered exceeded forecasts for inflation this year.
The company maintains that most forecasts peg cost of living rises at between 1.7 per cent and 1.8 per cent next year.
Chief operations officer Adrian Dunne told staff in a recent letter that many of the new work practices that the company was seeking in return for the pay hike had “already been implemented”.
