Slovak and Spanish trade unions raise serious allegations against the Ryanair subsidiary Buzz, which has recently been active from Vienna. If flight attendants and pilots flown in from Katowice were initially used, according to the employee representatives they are said to have switched to Slovaks. But there is one small detail that is spicy: According to the unions, they should be self-employed. The Spanish employee representatives are very concerned about this, because Ryanair practices this model in many countries and repeatedly burned their fingers because of court-established pseudo self-employment. Meanwhile, the Spanish USO is suing Laudamotion and Lauda Europe to establish a transfer of operations.

Internal Buzz documents that were leaked to the Slovak union and viewed by Aviation Direct show that the Buzz aircraft operated from Vienna use both pilots and flight attendants who should and should obtain a corresponding trade license in Slovakia formally fly as self-employed for the Polish Buzz subsidiary. It is not surprising that the parent company in Dublin and the subsidiary in Poland, whose headquarters are located near Chopin Airport, could not be reached for comment and did not respond to e-mails.

Temporary work is nothing new at Buzz, because almost all of the flight personnel is employed by an in-house “agency” called Warsaw Aviation. The current use of "self-employed" with a Slovak trade license shows that the Ryanair Group is falling back into old patterns. The group burned its fingers enormously in Germany, France, Ireland, Italy and other EU countries due to this practice, had to pay severe, court-determined fines and back payments to the tax and social security authorities. Since there are legally binding court rulings that have established bogus self-employment, the group of companies has become more cautious in recent years. In the past, however, this was always done via mailboxes that pilots were supposed to set up or were set up for them via a service provider. Slovakia as a new location for this practice is absolutely new.

Union warns: "No coverage in the event of illness"

But something has also happened in Bratislava, as Aviation Direct reported a few weeks ago that the Ryanair base had been closed. Instead, the Polish subsidiary Buzz is now active under FR flight numbers. For the staff there, the changes - similar to the previous ones in Budapest and Prague - meant either accepting the new, worse conditions or no longer having a job. In some cases, Buzz employees should now also obtain trade licenses in order to be self-employed. There would be no alternative and the corona pandemic was used as a scapegoat. Internal records indicate that Buzz expects more flexibility from this solution.

And in practice this means that those Slovak Buzz “self-employed” who have to commute to work in Vienna are not insured in the event of illness and are only paid for the hours they fly. The flexibility from Buzz's point of view is that costs only arise when flight orders are issued to the staff. Since there is currently little demand, the Ryanair Group is at least partially shifting the economic risk to the “self-employed” employees. In Slovakia, a lawsuit is already in preparation, which is to be brought before a court in Bratislava.

The USO union has a lot of experience with these methods and fought for years in Spain to have them turned off. Therefore one looks with solidarity at the colleagues in Vienna and Slovakia, because: “In our opinion this is wage and social dumping. The fact that Slovak 'self-employed people' are now flying in Buzz planes from Vienna is, in our opinion, a new, but well-known way, with which Ryanair wants to increase the pressure on the staff. Self-employed people do not receive sick pay in the event of illness and they also have no opportunity to organize themselves in a union. Since money is only paid when the Slovak Buzz employee actually flies, the economic risk is outsourced to the employee, ”a USO trade unionist told Aviation Direct.

Lauda was also sued in Spain over a possible transfer of operations

The Ryanair subsidiaries Laudamotion GmbH and Lauda Europe Ltd. have to face a court case in Spain in February 2022. Here, too, the main question is whether there is a transfer of business or not.

“Some Laudamotion employees did not sign the company's solicitation because they asked the company to comply with legal process. Then Laudamotion announced to employees that only those who accepted the change in working conditions would be transferred to Lauda Europe on the same terms. Again, this is illegal as the company has to follow a procedure to move workers from one company to another and the new company (Lauda Europe) has to respect the same terms, including seniority in the company. This is important for compensation in the event of dismissal or various questions relating to seniority in the company, ”USO told Aviation Direct. “Lauda Europe did not keep the same conditions that they had promised. And now the workers have lost their seniority, including the hours worked for Laudamotion. Here in Spain this has very negative consequences for employees: for example, there is less money in the event of an employer resigning. "

The Spanish employee representatives have therefore brought a lawsuit to determine that a transfer of operations from Laudamotion GmbH to Lauda Europe Ltd. is done. It is also requested that the court determine that the statutory provisions of Spanish labor law have not been complied with. If the procedure is successful, the employees at the Palma de Mallorca base would be able to keep their seniority and their old Laudamotion wages. “They seriously created the fiction that employees volunteer at LaudaMotion and take a new job at Lauda Europe in order to start from scratch. It's illegal and that's why we're going to court, ”said the USO.