Ryanair was ordered to pay £6.7million in fines and damages for breaching French law on native workers hired on foreign contracts.
The no-frills airline was found to have regularly hired local staff at its base at Marseille-Provence airport on Irish contracts, meaning employees would pay less than a quarter of France’s 45 per cent social security charges.
This, the French tribunal said, gave Ryanair and its boss, Michael O’Leary, an unfair advantage when it came to attracting employees and allowed them to engage in ‘social dumping’ to reduce its wage bill between 2007 and 2010.
Roland Rappaport, a lawyer representing pilots union SPL, had called for the court to ‘make an example’ of the carrier by forcing it to pay damages equivalent to the cost of the four Boeing 737s it uses from its Marignane base.
He said: ‘We are dealing with a company whose only goal is to counter the law in defiance of the interests of workers.’
In the end, Ryanair was fined £160,000 and told to pay France’s social security office £3.8million, its unemployment bureau £377,000 and its pensions £2.5million.
The rest of the money will be made up of compensation to airline staff unions.
Ryanair is arguing that the 127 staff involved in the case ‘were employed on Irish contracts, operating on Irish registered aircraft and have already paid their taxes, social taxes and state pension contributions in Ireland’.
Head of communications, Robin Kiely, said: ‘Ryanair will be lodging an early appeal. We do not believe that either Ryanair or our people can be forced to double pay these contributions a second time in France.’
