The Supreme Court has quashed a Labour Court decision that it had jurisdiction to investigate a trade dispute involving Ryanair and pilots represented by IMPACT, and ordered a rehearing under the legal approach set out in its judgment.
The appeal concerned a Labour Court decision made in January 2005 after IMPACT asked it to investigate issues including pilot contracts, conversion training for Boeing 737-800 aircraft and redundancy principles. Ryanair sought judicial review, arguing there was no qualifying trade dispute, that its internal arrangements had not failed, and that the Labour Court used unfair procedures. The High Court refused relief, and Ryanair appealed.
In a judgment delivered on 1 February 2007, Mr Justice Geoghegan said the Labour Court had not fairly established who the employees were on whose behalf IMPACT was acting. Their identities had not been disclosed. He also found that Ryanair management representatives’ submissions had effectively been treated as evidence, while the union called no pilot to give evidence about the employee representative committees or the alleged dispute.
The court held that an employer’s established internal negotiation machinery does not cease to be its practice merely because a category of employees withdraws from it. The relevant question was whether Ryanair had an appropriate, standing system for collective negotiations, assessed in the ordinary sense of that expression. The judgment said the Labour Court had not adequately investigated whether the committees could provide such a system, or whether internal procedures had been tried and failed.
The Supreme Court did not decide that Ryanair’s committees did provide adequate collective negotiation arrangements, nor did it finally determine whether a statutory trade dispute existed. Those questions required further examination by the Labour Court on evidence that could fairly test the competing positions.
The court allowed Ryanair’s appeal, quashed the Labour Court decision and directed a rehearing applying the procedures and legal interpretation described in the judgment.