Craft workers who are members of the trade union Unite are picketing the national children’s hospital construction site this morning.
The move is part of the union’s fourth day of industrial action in a dispute with some of the country’s largest contractors that centres on a claim for the restoration of a travel allowance would be worth about 12 per cent of basic pay.
The union says an approach was made through the Irish Congress of Trade Unions by industry body the Mechanical Engineering & Building Services Contractors’ Association (Mebsca) regarding talks. Unite has offered to meet next week but no agreement on talks was reached in time to defer today’s action.
Senior organiser Tom Fitzgerald said on Friday the intention had not been to significantly disrupt work at the site, which is at an advanced stage, but to highlight the ongoing dispute. Several members of Mebsca, whose collective agreements with the union is at the heart of the dispute, including Jones Engineering and Mercury, are carrying out work at the site.
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“We actually wrote to the board of the hospital asking if some of the contractors were pricing in the hour of travel but then not paying it but they said we should ask the companies which seems like a bit of a joke ... we are asking a legitimate question and they don’t seem to want to know.”
He said the number of Unite members working at the hospital site was small but they are receiving support on the picket from employees of the companies at other locations. The majority of workers who are members of other unions are understood to have been working normally on Friday.
The union’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, said construction “is a highly profitable sector, and our members will continue to have Unite’s unstinting support as they fight to have the first hour of ‘travel time’ restored”.
The employers’ group says the allowance was incorporated into basic pay more than a decade ago with the result that the workers – mainly plumbers, pipe fitters and welders – are among the best-paid workers of their kind in the sector.
Mebsca has said it is “extremely disappointed that its member firms are yet again being targeted by Unite for additional increases in pay approximately eight months after an agreement on pay was negotiated with the union. This agreement does not expire until May 2026″.
“This current claim by Unite is for the ‘restoration of the first hour of travel time’ which was incorporated into hourly rates in 2011 by agreement with Unite. The union is claiming that the 2011 agreement was a temporary agreement, despite the fact that when the current pay agreement expires, hourly rates will have increased by almost 32 per cent since 2011. Mebsca members pay a travel allowance on top of pay.”
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