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Latest update: 15/10/2010
- airlines - employment - France
Ryanair to close Marseille base over tax dispute
Low-cost Irish carrier Ryanair will close its Marseille base as a result of its ongoing dispute with French authorities. French prosecutors have refused to drop a case against the airline for hiring French employees on Irish employment contracts.
By News Wires (text)
AFP - Low-cost airline Ryanair said Wednesday it will close its base in Marseille because French prosecutors refused to drop a case against it for hiring workers on Irish contracts.
"We are very disappointed at this decision by the French authorities," said Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary, who travelled to the city to announce the closure of what has been the firm's Mediterranean hub since 2006.
O'Leary was making good on a threat he issued in May after local prosecutors accused Ryanair of illegal working practices because the Irish airline employed workers in Marseille under Irish contracts to save on payroll taxes.
The unions who filed the original legal complaint said that employees living in France should be declared in France.
But O'Leary repeated on Wednesday his belief that "these are not French jobs but rather Irish jobs on Irish aircraft which are defined by EU regulations as Irish territory".
"Sadly, the loss of those four aircraft, 200 jobs and 13 routes at Marseille is a high price necessary to demonstrate these are mobile Irish workers," he told reporters.
O'Leary said he wanted to avoid being fined if the courts rejected his firm's arguments, as they did in April when they fined British budget airline EasyJet for hiring 170 employees under British contracts at a Paris airport
EasyJet was ordered to pay 1.4 million euros (1.88 million dollars) and 100,000 euros in damages to unions representing crew at Paris' Orly airport who were civil plaintiffs in the case.
The Marseille Provence chamber of commerce, which says it plans to ask the French state to drop the legal action against Ryanair, said the pull-out would damage the local economy.
"Ryanair, thanks to its planes based on our territory, has enabled the creation of 1,000 jobs directly or indirectly and brought into the local economy over 550 million euros," said the chamber's president Jacques Pfister. The four planes currently based in Marseille will be moved early next year to bases in Spain, Italy or Lithuania.
The routes shut down include flights from the French port city to Agadir, Venice and Palermo, said O'Leary.
But he added that the airline would continue to operate flights from Marseille to 10 other destinations including Brussels, Frankfurt and London -- using planes and crew that are based elsewhere.
It is not the first time the company's practices have been challenged in France.
A French court in 2007 dismissed a complaint by Ryanair against a law saying that employees of foreign airlines living in France have to come under French social security and tax law.
Ryanair, which has a total of 7,000 employees across Europe and is the continent's largest low-cost carrier, has taken that case to the European Court of Human Rights.
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Comments (19)
Marseilles,Ryanair and French Economic Suicide
A blog post on the subject - http://marlinspikenestor8435.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/marseilles-ryanair...
Ryanair and the law
No matter how old and how stupid some laws are, they are here, and they are here for everybody. If the authorities let Ryanair evade taxes just because they are a foreign comany, how fair would that be for local ones?
Yes, French laws would need to be revised but YES, Ryanair has to abide theses laws too.
Ryanair to close Marseille base over tax dispute
ha! so now the french workers have no jobs at all, and fewer tourists will visit and spend money around Marseille.
some days I think unions live on the moon - they are SO detached from real life.
fairness
This dispute is between 2 nasty entities Ryanair is not great but the French are their own worst enemies.
I know a little now about France and how it works and it is a very backward, closed and authoritarian country riven with armies of people doing nothing very much but trying to hold back the modern world.
It is a shame as it stifles its own people from progressing and growing and has so little confidence in itself that it picks fights such as these where the only losers are the workers on the ground.
Ryanair the saga.....
What is all the fuss about if I don't get the right service from my preferred shop/enterprise/organisation then I vote with my feet and find another. If enough people do this with Ryanair, the company and particiularly Mr O'leary will very quickly adopt the correct tactics to make money - after all thats what drive him. So come on vote with you feet not just your letters of discontent.
Reality bites for France
I dislike Ryanair and think O'Leary is a ridiculous motormouth. However this, along with the ridiculous strikes over the unaffordable retirement regime, show how out of touch too many French people are with reality. Global business doesn't care a hoot about 'la vie francaise', and France's increasingly desperate attempts to hold back the tide will condemn it to far bigger problems when the fight is inevitably lost.
JUDGE OBJECTIVELY NOT EMOTIONALLY
Radix malorum est cupiditas - greed (arrogance and pride) is the root of all evils, money makes the world go round and therefore keeps people employed, warm and well fed. It is bad enough governments not providing subsidies for airlines to keep them in business, taxing them out of business and increasing unemployment is really not the way to go about running an economy. Jealousy is not the best policy of the French Authorities and will get them nowhere, especially when it is at the expense of the working class.
Ryanair
Typical of this company all they do is moan and bleat and then overcharge customers for minor items. They have a monopoly on many services and therefore cannot give a damb how they treat their paying customers, the way they carry on they give the impression that passengers should be grateful that we pay and then are even allowed to get on their aircraft?? Awful company awful !!
Mr. O Leary and workers treated as slaves
Mr. O'Leary gives job only if you pay by your own the cost of it, then after a probation time will send you home and will substitute you simply with another employee paying for his own training. this smart man is receiving public money from local authorities otherwise he will not fly anymore on that specific airport. Plus he doesn't pay correctly payrolls to employees and give his 7000 workers no future because they are never hired permanently. quite often pilots and flight attendant are requested to exceed daily and monthly European limits of duty and who doesn't comply with those illegal requests ...are immediately fired out. this is how we permit O'leary to survive with his company, we pay, we leave workers to be used as slaves with no rights and under a constant blackmail threat.
sorry guys ...but rules and laws that protects your employ must be valid to all workers, and I'd rather spend 100 euro more on my ticket to fly in vacation rather than be part of this modern slavery system which gives money to just one in spite of all the hard job of so many,
Captain GUX
Rignts
There are two big news:
first, too many people think that money comes before rights, second, French Authorities does not agree...
WWW French Authorities!
I LIKE O'LEARY
...simply bcz he's doing what ALL the national careers around Europe should have been doing in recent times. I am a former Alitalia pilot now forced to emigrate in the gulf, and I hope he will not give up to those national self-protective attempts to recover the market the major companies have lost thanks to their FULL incapacity.
At least, in the next future I will have a chance of coming back home to live and work in my country, instead of waiting for the never-coming expansion plans of the static "big ones"... Thanks Michael.
FRENCH EMPLOYMENT TRAVESTY
Cutting one's nose to spite one's face, pulling the carpet from under one's own feet and killing the geese that lay the golden eggs. What is wrong with the French working mentality? Are the French Authorities permanently out to lunch? Are they sentient?
Ryanair
Its not only a nightmare to do business in France but to go abroad too. The big looser are the French and the big winner Air France.
I am French and I am sick and fed up to be obliged to use expensive, unorganized and rude French air line company such as Air France. France, employees and French customers needs those charges to be dropped ASAP.
ryanair
just who does this O'Leary guy think he is that laws don't apply to him?
ryanair pull out Marseille
Ryanair is one of these companies that take everything and give nothing back. Yes ! we need low fares airline in europe but not ryanair.
Doing business in France is a
Doing business in France is a nightmare. French unions are the problem.
Reductions to Ryan Air Services from Marseille
I am not a supporter of Ryan Air or it's owner, but the actions on the part of the French government appears to be self defeating, I daresay that when they lose the 1000 jobs and the income of 550Million euro's they might wake up and realise the error of their ways.
Ryanair
If Ryanair want a fight then the French should give them a fight. They should revoke ALL Ryanair's routes and landing tights in France and refuse them overflying French territory. That should wipe the smile off O'leary;s face.
Ryanair
Once again Michael O'Leary throws his toys out of the cot when things don't go his way!! Yet another free publicity stunt to draw peoples attention to his airline. O'leary is all about getting things his way, regardless of the fact that he is breaking the law in whatever country he is moaning about at the time.
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