Staff at the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) involved in a campaign to have the organisation negotiate with their union, Siptu, on pay and conditions, have decided again leafleting Saturday’s senior men’s international game after talks were scheduled for next week.
Members of the union working for the FAI, who include regional and community development officers as well as some administrative staff, have been seeking negotiations on a collective agreement and have been publicising the association’s refusal to engage with Siptu on the issue at league and other games in recent months.
The campaign had been intended to culminate in a large scale presence outside the Aviva Stadium on Saturday for the England game but the Our Union, Our Team campaign has now been suspended pending next Wednesday’s engagement.
“It has been agreed that Siptu shop stewards representing staff in the FAI will meet with management on September 11th,” said Paul Keogh, one of the FAI’s football development officers who is also a union representative at the association.
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He said the campaign had been aimed at securing engagement on a collective pay and conditions agreement but also on the implementation of recommendations from the Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court which the union says the association has previously disregarded.
“We hope to make progress on these issues and others of concern for SIPTU members employed by the FAI at the upcoming meeting,” said Mr Keogh.
The FAI has previously suggested some of the WRC and Labour Court decisions favour it rather than the union’s members. Its position has been that only a minority of its staff are members of Siptu and it engages with all of them through an internal mechanism.
Siptu argues those mechanisms have left some workers without any pay rises over several years resulting in significant pay cuts in real terms. They say staff at the association are paid less than people doing the same work at other major sports organisations and some are on roughly the same salary they were earning 17 years ago.
Paul Whelan, another development officer and shop steward said “everyone involved with the FAI wants the best for football in Ireland. As trade union activists we firmly believe that one way that this can be achieved is through collective engagement between staff and management.
“We wish to thank the support we have received so far from the football community in Ireland for the ‘Our Union, Our Team’ campaign and we will update them on developments as they arise.”
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