Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 November 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Issues Affecting the Aviation Sector: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Paddy Kavanagh:

On workers' rights, I will mention two impacts. The first is the associated health risks. The second is the redundancy issue I touched on. As a result of the Government suspending section 12 of the Redundancy Payments Act, we have a situation whereby workers have been laid off for more than four weeks and should be able to apply for redundancy under that Act but cannot do so. That is also the case for workers who wish to seek redundancy after six weeks of a combination of being laid off and being on short time. Even if they wish to apply for redundancy, they cannot do so but, in spite of that, the time they are out of work is not counted as service. That should be taken into account. It is very important to our members. If they are going to be denied the right to seek redundancy, at least let that period of time count as service for when the calculation-----