O’Leary has clearly lost it. Most people think this story is a joke, but on further examination it turns out to be true. Perhaps O’Leary thinks travel should became like a smokey Irish gambling den, where everyone sits round with a pint of Guinness or ale, coupled with raucous laughter and jollity. Some people’s idea of bliss, others horror!
Ryanair are no strangers to controversy.
To most office workers, recharging a mobile phone barely registers among the perks of nine-to-five life. But the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair has sealed its reputation for parsimony by banning its staff from using chargers on the grounds that they amount to theft of its electricity.
The edict, which has infuriated employees and trade unions, will save the airline an estimated 1.4p for each charge. But even if all its 2,600 staff plugged in their phones at once, the bill of £28.60 would scarcely dent the company's annual profits of €226m (£154m).
Its success has been masterminded by a belligerent, rugby-loving chief executive, Michael O'Leary, who has a taste for profanity and a mission to make air travel available to the masses, rather than merely to "rich fuckers". He once summed up his business philosophy by claiming that with air fares as low as 99p, passengers had little right to complain.
Using the internet at Ryanair's head office is strongly discouraged, which is not surprising because a rash of Ryanair websites has spread across the internet for staff to write anonymously about their discontent.
The bitterness and vitriol expressed by staff online has concerned the company so much that it has applied for a high court injunction to unmask the identities of employees posting messages on one such site.
Shay Cody, the deputy general secretary of the Irish trade union Impact, said: "Ryanair are absolutely on their own - they're unique. They are extremely hostile to the workforce and to any attempt to organise the workforce. It's a very, very oppressive regime there and they have extremely high staff turnover, particularly among junior pilots and cabin crew."
Such is the concern about working conditions that the International Transport Workers' Federation has urged air travellers to think hard about Ryanair's employment policies before booking tickets.
A source at one pilots' association said: "Essentially, when you look at Ryanair you've got to forget about conventional business models and think about the nature of what a 'cost' is. You've got to stop thinking about employees as people who have rights - they're a resource which flows through the organisation and when you're done with them, you get rid of them."
Source (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/articl ... 85,00.html )
The thorny issue of climate change has left most airlines bending over backwards to sound green. But Europe's largest low-cost carrier, Ryanair, has dismissed its environmentally nervous rivals as "lemmings".
Ryanair's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, has refused to support an industry-wide effort to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Asked yesterday what he would say to travellers worried about the environment, he replied: "I'd say, sell your car and walk.
The Green party are obviously very critical of Ryanair’s attitudes.
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/groupednews/r=group%3D2
Overall aviation is a whisker from getting aviation tax added to curb cheap flights, and O’Leary is doing nothing but making the situation worse with his irrational business plan.
Posted: Sat 04 Sep 2004, 11:22:16
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