Casablanca – The Ryanair section of USO, a prominent Spanish trade union, condemned on Saturday Ryanair for sending Moroccan crew members to its Malaga headquarters through Moroccan planes operating flights in Spain.
“A completely illegal operation on all fronts. First, because of blackjacking, here there is a legally called strike, with abusive minimum services by the company, denounced in the National High Court,” warned the general secretary of USO-Ryanair, Lidia Arasanz.
“And today, in addition, Ryanair has not notified many of those minimum services, it has found itself without crew members to operate the flights for reasons solely attributable to the company, and it is breaking more and more laws,” Arasanz added.
The second legal violation, he continued, is that “these crews are not registered with the Spanish Social Security, not even in a country of the European Union, and they are operating flights with departure and arrival in Spain.”
The USO-Ryanair trade union branch has filed a complaint with the Malaga Airport’s National Police, accusing Ryanair of illegally relocating five-cabin employees from Marrakech.
According to the union, four of the five relocated crew members have run the Malaga-Santiago de Compostela FR2573 and are expected to operate the return trip (FR2574). Two more domestic flights, FR9107 and FR9108, Malaga-Mahon/Menorca-Malaga, are also expected to run later this month.
A fifth Moroccan crew member has been allocated to complete the crew of the two flights from Malaga to Palma de Mallorca (FR5730 and FR5729).
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“We have been informed that the EASA must be informed of the crews that operate each flight and if these crews comply with the law. Something that we have no record of Ryanair notifying, because the illegality, with the aggravating context of the strike, is manifest,” Arasanz concluded.
This is not the first time Ryanair has faced accusations of illegal conduct from a Spanish trade union.
Earlier this month, Ryanair crew members affiliated with USO and SITCPLA, two leading Spanish unions, filed complaints against the low-cost Irish airline for paying its Spanish staff miserly wages.
One news report even documented that, in addition to low wages, Ryanair does not provide cabin staff with food or water while on duty. A clause in the company’s contract for cabin members suggests it is “a cabin crew member’s ‘responsibility to provide your own sustenance whilst on duty,’” the report noted.
