Members of the Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA) in HP who work on the Bank of Ireland account have voted by a substantial majority to support all-out strike action for a pay claim.
reports.
Limited industrial action notice has been served on HP and comes into effect next week. It will involve a ban on overtime, on-call, call-out and out-of-hours remote support, and it could have a serious impact on Bank of Ireland. The vote for action follows months of discussions between HP management in Clonskeagh, Dublin, and the IBOA.
According to IBOA sources, HP refused to improve on recent pay proposals put to its members. The finance union recently conducted a ballot for all-out strike, which has been supported by over 85 per cent of its members.
Bank of Ireland outsourced its mainframe systems to HP in 2003 in a move which saw around 150 staff transfer to the computer company. The IBOA represents the majority of those workers.
Industrial action could disrupt plans by Bank of Ireland to transfer its UK subsidiary Bristol & West's systems on to the Dublin mainframe, which is understood to be taking place next week.
Bank of Ireland declined to comment on the development.
The general secretary of the IBOA, Larry Broderick, confirmed that his members had balloted in support of all-out strike action in HP.
"This issue is fundamentally about HP's failure to honour agreements with the IBOA and, in particular, the refusal to give our members a reasonable salary increase for 2006 and 2007.
"The IBOA has a mandate for all-out strike but the IBOA HP committee has proposed initially limited industrial action to commence next week in the hope that HP would respond positively to the genuine concerns of our members.
"The IBOA is particularly concerned that HP has refused to use the normal industrial relations procedure to deal with this issue, leaving IBOA and our members no option but to take this course of action."
A spokesperson for HP said that the company takes all personal grievances seriously.
"It has in place rigorous policies to ensure access to local procedures which can lead to a speedy resolution in a fair and reasonable manner. HP is in continuous discussions with employees and their representatives and considers it inappropriate to comment further at this time."
There has been a history of strained relations between the IBOA and HP and Bank of Ireland in relation to the outsourcing deal. Negotiations in 2003 culminated in a one-day stoppage of staff that August. All sides eventually agreed to allow the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission to intervene and recommendations were issued in August 2003 which were accepted by IBOA members.
This resulted in staff servicing the Bank of Ireland contract receiving pay increases in line with what would have applied in the bank, according to the IBOA. However, it said that this did not happen in 2006 and 2007.
