French court fines easyJet euro1.5 mln ($2.1 mln) for keeping airport workers on UK contracts

Airline easyJet fined in French labor dispute

PARIS — A French court on Friday ordered low-cost airline easyJet PLC to pay €1.55 million (US$2.1 million) in damages and fines for employing airport workers in France on British contracts, instead of costlier French ones.

The British company was convicted for keeping 170 workers at Orly airport south of Paris on British contracts between 2003 and 2006.

The court in the Paris suburb of Creteil, near Orly, fined the company €150,000 and ordered it to pay a total of another €1.4 million to French state employment agency and other plaintiffs.

EasyJet maintains that it was adhering to French law at the time. French rules now require foreign airlines to apply French contracts to airport workers in France.

EasyJet immediately said it would consider appealing, and said it was “disappointed.”

“We paid into the British system, and that was compliant with all the rules at the time,” easyJet spokesman Oliver Aust told The Associated Press. “The law in France then changed.”

“We are not trying to get around anything here,” he said, noting that the company has switched or is switching to local contracts in its other European airport locations.

A lawyer for airport workers’ union UNAC, Rachid Brihi, said he was “satisfied” with the ruling and said it would boost workers in another lawsuit against discount carrier Ryanair Holdings PLC. UNAC was set to get some of the money that easyJet has been ordered to pay.

EasyJet and Ryanair filed their own lawsuits in 2007 against the French government, arguing that the change in French rules was illegally hampering their operations and were contrary to freedom of movement around the European Union.

An easyJet manager at Orly was taken into police custody briefly at the beginning of the investigation, in 2006. On the prosecutor’s orders, labor inspectors and police and customs officers conducted a surprise check of Easyjet operations at Orly, Paris’ second-largest airport after Roissy-Charles de Gaulle.

EasyJet currently has 500 employees in Paris and Lyon, all now on French contracts.

Associated Press Writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.