How four air hostesses “could end up costing TAP €300 million”
With a sale process on the horizon, the last thing Portugal’s flagship airline TAP needs is a multi-million euro lawsuit on its hands. But that’s what it has – thanks to a successful legal challenge lodged by four air hostesses.
According to Público, the challenge – upheld last month by the Supreme Court of Justice – means that the labour contracts of around 1,200 crew members were illegal. TAP consequently faces paying out “tens of millions of euros” in compensation.
What is this all about? It goes back to the time of the pandemic, when TAP (like other airlines) ‘let go of staff’: the air hostesses had been hired on a fixed-term basis in 2018, and were dismissed in 2020 (even though the airline was in the process of buying new aircraft).
The situation put the women in an extremely precarious position, thus they decided to go down the legal route, claiming their dismissal had been unjust and without due process.
Judges found that the salaries of fixed term crew members were lower than those of permanent staff, which constitutes an illegality for not respecting the principle of equal treatment between workers.
According to reports, the four are now ‘back up in the air’, having been reintegrated into TAP’s flight personnel. But here’s the rub: the same contracts applied to 1,200 crew members, explains Público. In fact, president of the National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Personnel, Ricardo Penarróias, says they could have applied to as many as 2,000 people.
In other words, TAP is staring at a major problem. It almost certainly cannot give all those people back their jobs, thus it risks shelling out “tens of millions” in compensation.
According to Ricardo Penarróias, the airline could have to pay between €200 and €300 million.
But no-one has yet been able to pinpoint a figure.
According to a source in Público who is aware of the case, some of the cases are very old so they will be statute-barred, and the company should only have to pay a ‘modest’ (depending on one’s perspective) €60 million, reports SIC Notícias.
According to the same source, each worker should receive between €25,000 and €30,000.
Ricardo Penarróias however denies that old cases will be time-barred.
For now, TAP has not yet said whether it will be appealing this decision. Whatever happens, the problem has arrived at an extremely sensitive moment.
