The Kaunas District Court heard a redundancy complaint against Ryanair’s subsidiaries, Ryanair’s Designated Activity Company in Ireland and Ryanair’s in Poland.
All the claimants are residents of Lithuania, Vaiva Milkeraitiene, the media and public relations assistant to the chairman of the Kaunas court, confirmed to the BNS news agency.
At the initiative of the employer, the contract with the employees was terminated in June 2020 because their functions in the company had become redundant, the court concluded. The applicants claimed that their dismissal was unlawful because the employer had the opportunity to transfer them to a Polish company under the same conditions after the transfer.
The Irish company stated that the business had not been relocated and that the applicants had been dismissed for gross misconduct when they did not return to work after being relocated to Stansted Airport in London. The staff stated that they had not agreed to the transfer to London.
The court upheld the claim in part, finding that the business had been transferred and that the employees had been dismissed through no fault of their own, in breach of the Labor Code.
“As it was concluded that there was a partial transfer of business, the accused [Īrijas un Polijas kompānijām] “joint and several liability must be assumed,” the court concluded.
The court also noted that the employees were required to live no more than an hour’s drive from Kaunas Airport and had lived in Lithuania for many years with their families and young children.
The judgment of the Kaunas District Court can be appealed.
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