The prospect of an all-out strike at Guinness plants in the Republic from September 15th moved a step closer last night with the company's refusal - at conciliation talks brokered by the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) - to lift its threat to shed 290 jobs in Dundalk.
The talks, which lasted four hours, broke up without resolution, and five of the six unions that comprise the Guinness joint union forum are committed to balloting their members immediately on an all-out strike. These are the ATGWU and SIPTU, as well as the craft unions, TEEU, the AEEU and UCATT.
The Guinness Staff Union, which represents about 1,000 workers out of 1,800 in the areas affected by the proposed redundancies - managers and clerical staff, brewers, engineers and sales personnel - is not to ballot its members yet, it is understood.
Throughout the afternoon, members of the Guinness joint union forum insisted that the company must remove its threat to close McArdles packaging plant in Co Louth, with the loss of 200 jobs, and to reduce the Harp workforce at Great Northern Brewery by 90.
The joint union forum position was that no talks could continue on any aspect of the Guinness rationalisation proposals unless the issue of the threatened job losses was off the table.
It is understood that representatives from Guinness management and the unions will meet again under the auspices of the LRC next Friday, August 11th, when management is expected to offer clarification on the proposed rationalisation programme.
However, a spokesman for Guinness said last night that the management team was fully empowered to negotiate on behalf of the company and that any clarification being sought by the unions from London would make little difference to the situation on the ground. Management had attended the LRC talks yesterday, he said, on the basis of no pre-conditions.
The company had been prepared to concede an extension of the timescale for the proposed rationalisation programme, the spokesman said. But this concession had not been made due to the unions' insistence that no talks could take place until the threat to jobs was removed.
