Ryanair vulneró el derecho a la huelga de sus trabajadores, según el Tribunal Constitucional

The Constitutional Court has upheld the right of Ryanair workers to strike, which they claimed had been violated by the airline, represented by the Union of Workers. The court overturned the previous decision of the Supreme Court, which had favored the Irish company, and the resolution of the Ministry of Transport that had set the minimum services.

The strike, held between August 2022 and Christmas of 2023, took place after the ministry, in the absence of an agreement between the company and the unions, set the minimum services on August 5, 2022. The Constitutional doctrine states that when a conflict affects an essential activity or service for the community, such as air traffic, it is the public administration that "establishes with clarity and sufficient precision" the criteria taken into account for the determination of these minimum services.

However, when administrative resolutions, as in this case, delegate excessively to the company the decision on the number of workers who must sacrifice their right to strike, it allows the company "almost complete availability to decide the workforce". Consequently, the fundamental right to strike is limited for workers. While the Constitutional Court deemed that the administration had sufficiently justified which specific flights had to remain operational, it failed to do the same when determining the criteria to calculate the number of workers needed to cover them.

The administration used vague criteria such as "necessary" or "sufficient", contradicting the demands of the doctrine when it comes to limiting fundamental rights like the right to strike. In essence, the administration delegated to the employer a wider decision-making scope, to the point of being able to "define what is 'sufficient' and what is 'necessary'".

The ruling, approved by the progressive sector with five votes against the conservative sector, includes a particular vote from magistrate Enrique Arnaldo, who believes that the administrative resolution complied with constitutional demands. According to him, the administration had appropriately determined which flights had to remain operational, and could not be more precise with respect to the number of workers needed to cover them, as it did not need to know that.