ELECTRICIANS ACROSS the State may go on strike in response to a High Court challenge by some employers to regional pay agreements.
Owen Willis, general secretary of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), told delegates to the union’s biennial conference in Cork this weekend a national strike may be necessary “in solidarity with the ballot for industrial action by our members in the electrical contracting industry”.
The ballot for industrial action already taken was in response to a move by employers to challenge regional employment agreements (REA) under which contracted electricians are paid legally enforceable rates of about €21 per hour. Mr Willis said these employers’ wanted to pay rates as low as €8.65 and hour, the minimum wage.
“If the challenge is successful it could lead to the unravelling of REAs across a wide swathe of the economy affecting hundred of thousands of workers. This delegates, is the most serious challenge to an agreement in our sector since 1920 and to collective bargaining in the history of the State.”
He said the REAs had brought stability to industry but their very constitutionality was being challenged. The employers believed if they could bring down the REAs, he said, they could pay minimum wage rates, remove sick pay, pensions and apply only statutory holiday entitlements.
Earlier this year a High Court injunction was granted to a number of contractors to stop the Labour Court considering an increase, sought by the TEEU, of €1.05 per hour to the current REA rates.
In October the TEEU succeeded in having the injunction lifted and the Labour Court is due to consider the increase in January. A number of contractors are however pursuing a High Court challenge to the REAs.
“Let me make it very clear,” said Mr Willis. “These contractors may believe their court action will succeed . . . but they are wrong. Our capacity to defend our members will not be diminished.”
Delegates also voted in favour of a moratorium on evictions from family homes. General secretary designate, Eamon Devoy, said almost one in four of the cases listed before the High Court’s chancery division last week had been for repossession, a third of them of family homes.
“Even the judges are questioning a law that allows pensioners or young couples with children to be thrown out on the street. Thousands of homeowners are only in this situation because of bankers who lent recklessly and a Government that lacked the moral courage to stand up to the developers and speculators.”
The conference also called on Irish workers to boycott Coca-Cola and to drink Pepsi instead.
Eastern regional secretary, Arthur Hall, said Coca-Cola had “thrown 250 people out of work by closing a highly profitable and efficient factory in Drogheda and moving production to a non-union plant in Ballina”.
