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2009

Marine Terminal workers to seek all-out picket on Dublin Port as strike enters second week

Date Released: 09 Jul 2009

SIPTU members at Marine Terminals Limited are to seek an all-out picket from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions for Dublin Port as their strike enters its second week tomorrow. “We have made repeated efforts to engage with the employers, as have the Labour Relations Commission, since the strike began”, SIPTU Branch Organiser Oliver McDonagh said, “but every approach has been rebuffed. Instead the company has insisted on communicating with us only through their legal team and the courts.

“The dispute is over attempts by the company to impose compulsory redundancies and cuts in the pay and conditions of the workforce. The Labour Court issued an opinion last month in favour of the union under the Protection of Employment Act, 2007, over an attempt by the company to make most of the workforce redundant.

Mr. McDonagh said today that the union remains available for talks but that since Peel Ports took over the Marine Terminal operations last year it has shown “a consistent unwillingness to treat with the union or accept agreed procedures for dealing with problems.”

Marine Terminals employed over 70 workers, most of them members of SIPTU. When it decided to make 19 SIPTU members redundant earlier this year, it used its own selection criteria, including testing employees on machinery that some of them had received no training in operating.

Five workers were made redundant initially and on May 15, 13 more were told by management they would have to go as well. On the same day all other SIPTU employees were written to telling them they must sign new contracts agreeing to pay cuts of between 14 per cent and 18 per cent or be sacked.

A hearing to resolve the dispute at the Labour Relations Commission had to be abandoned when the management team insisted on bringing security personnel into the negotiations with them. SIPTU subsequently referred the threat of mass compulsory redundancies to the Labour Court under the 2007 Act. On June 22, the Court gave an opinion to the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, on June 22 that the company could have been in breach of the Act in relation to many of the redundancies if it had gone ahead and this might have to be revisited if it carried out its threat.

The company placed the workforce on a 20 hour week and deployed new workers from Scotland and Northern Ireland to take up the slack. It has even insisted that a cleaner laid off earlier in this year with the intention of making her redundant must come to work for one hour each day to make up for wages paid to her while she was laid off rather than work off the time normally.

“This company has behaved appallingly”, Mr McDonagh said, “and has avoided all our attempts to negotiate with it. I can tell them now that they will get the redundancies they are looking for provided they negotiate normally and are willing to offer a decent package. But they will not achieve their objectives by bullyboy tactics.

“The only reason we are applying for an all-out picket is the absolute refusal of the company to engage with us.”





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