easyJet pilots and management have achieved a breakthrough in negotiations meaning that no pilots will be made compulsorily redundant. In June easyJet’s estimate was that 727 pilots were at risk of redundancy.

Since March of this year, the BALPA negotiating team anticipated the threat of potential job cuts and prepared for the start of a consultation process.  BALPA’s membership and organisation has grown from strength to strength during the COVID crisis, twice rejecting the company’s coronavirus cooperation agreement and then recently also firmly rejecting a redundancy selection matrix that included sickness.

Since these challenges, the company has engaged more positively. There has been a huge community effort to do everything possible to reduce the need for compulsory measures which has resulted in 60 pilots leaving voluntarily and a further 1,500 opting for part time work.

All the pilots based at Southend, Stansted, and Newcastle which have been closed will be offered jobs elsewhere on the UK network.

We have been extremely pleased with the airline’s positive approach during negotiations which was, like ours, to reduce job losses to an absolute minimum while recognising the seriousness of the COVID-19 challenge to the air travel sector.

Brian Strutton, BALPA General Secretary said, “This is a remarkable achievement which has only been possible because of three groups of people: the BALPA reps, easyJet management who have worked with us constructively during this process, but most of all the easyJet pilots themselves who have volunteered in record numbers for part time work and voluntary redundancy to help save their colleagues’ jobs.”

Captain Sean Casey, Chairman of the BALPA easyJet Company Council said, “I have been overwhelmed by the take up of part time. Each pilot who has volunteered to work less has done so because he or she wants to help colleagues keep their jobs. This truly is a demonstration of our unity in easyJet.

“I want to pay tribute to our easyJet management colleagues who we’ve been working with throughout this process. We’ve had tough talks, but in the end we have come to a sensible and fair arrangement in light of the crisis the whole aviation sector is facing. We have now secured a solid platform for both the airline and the pilots to benefit from the recovery we all hope to see in the next year.”