Ryanair Holdings PLC and its protesting Irish pilots yesterday reached a new labor agreement after a marathon negotiating session, pointing to the end of a dispute that has disrupted summer travel for Europe’s biggest discount airline.
Shares of Ryanair rose the most in three months in Dublin, where the company is based, after trade union Forsa said that an agreement had been struck following 22 hours of discussions that finished early yesterday.
The deal is to go to a ballot of pilots, with the labor group recommending that they accept it, Forsa said.
A settlement in Ireland is seen as key to accelerating the resolution of a wider European dispute at the airline, because it was staff in Ryanair’s home country who initiated a push for unionization and better employment terms.
The Irish breakthrough came as the carrier’s Dutch cabin crew on Wednesday night voted to strike over pay and labor conditions, although that operation has just one base.
Ryanair shares advanced as much as 6 percent, their biggest intraday jump since May 21. The stock was trading 5.5 percent higher at 13.87 euros as of 9:03am in the Irish capital.
A series of strikes across Europe has disrupted travel for thousands of people and weighed on Ryanair earnings.
The company’s Irish pilots last walked out on Aug. 10 in an action that also involved cockpit crew from Germany, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands, causing more than 400 flights to be scrapped.
The Irish discussions were led by Kieran Mulvey, a labor-relations veteran and former chairman of the Irish Workplace Relations Commission, who asked that no public comment be made while the ballot is conducted, Forsa said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to