Spanair workers have rejected an offer of employment from Ryanair.

 There are two reasons for their rejection, the obligation to pay taxes in Ireland, and to ‘open an account in Gibraltar to collect their wages’.

President of the Spanair workers committee, Ricardo Oso, has said they would rather try to obtain work with AENA, the Spanish Airports Authority, or to be relocated at El Prat Airport in Barcelona.

Oso called or a greater involvement from the Generalitat Catalan Government in ‘compensation and relocation’ of the workers, and called for responsibility from them as they were the largest investor in the airline.
‘The Catalan Government cannot wash their hands because they have invested a lot of public money’, he said.

Michael O’Leary, Chairman of Ryanair, said the closure of Spanair was ‘an inevitable tragedy’ because of the high management costs, and he invited the workers in the Catalan company to apply for a job with his.

He explained in a press conference that there had been contacts with the Pilots’ Chief from Spanair to transmit the invitation although he underlined that the company is Irish and as such the wages would be paid in an Irish bank and tax would also be paid in Ireland.

Spanair workers remain in limbo as they are not yet on the dole, but neither are they working, and they were only paid 1,000 € for their wages in January.

O’Leary had to be escorted after a press conference in Bilbao later today by the Basque regional police, La Ertzaintza, after he provoked the Spanair workers who have been holding a sit-in at the airport for the past nine days.

The ex Spanair employees tried to get people to boycott the act in which O’Leary was presenting new connections from Bilbao which his company was taking up, to Madrid and Barcelona. Reports indicate that it was a gesture of victory from O’Leary which upset the Spanair workers, and the police had to escort him to his boarding gate to get a flight to Madrid. Before he left O’Leary commented that he thanked the protest for the ‘publicity’ it had given to Ryanair.
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