THE LABOUR Relations Commission (LRC) has intervened in the row between Siptu and the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) over pay which had threatened to cause significant disruption at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports next Thursday.
The DAA said last night it had accepted an invitation from the LRC to take part in talks relating to the payment of increments to staff at the company which operates the State’s three main airports. A Siptu spokesman said last night that the LRC invitation would be considered on Monday.
Last night, the DAA said it remained unclear whether Siptu members still intended to strike next Thursday on the issue of increments and whether such action would be officially sanctioned by the union leadership.
The decision by Siptu’s branch at the DAA to serve strike notice to come into force between 4am and noon next Thursday over increments has come as a major embarrassment for the union’s leadership which has said it did not sanction the action. Siptu is engaged, along with other unions, in talks with the Government on a new economic recovery agreement.
However it is understood that members locally believed they had a valid mandate for industrial action. The industrial action committee of the branch is expected to meet on Monday. As of last night the notice of strike action, served by the local branch at the DAA, had not formally been withdrawn.
Siptu president Jack O’Connor said yesterday there were two issues in the dispute, the decision of the DAA not to pay increases under the national wage deal and the withholding of annual increments which, he said, constituted an integral element of the pay structure. He said a majority of members had authorised industrial action over both issues.
Mr O’Connor said that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) had deferred industrial action on the national wage increases and that the application “for sanction to promote industrial action in respect of the payment of increments had not yet been decided”.
In a letter to the DAA yesterday, Mr O’Connor said: “All of this difficulty could easily be avoided by your company undertaking to comply with our existing agreements by applying the due incremental increases and subsequently progressing any issues through the agreed procedures.”
In a statement last night, the company called on Siptu to immediately withdraw the strike notice and go into talks at the LRC.
“Any further delay in doing so will merely cause undue concern and inconvenience to the travelling public.
“At no point has the DAA stated that increments will not be paid. The company has paused the payment of any salary increases pending the outcome of a cost recovery programme. The increment payments in question are normally paid in the middle of April,” it said.
Meanwhile, employers’ group Ibec has warned that new pay increases for workers were hard to envisage before 2011.
Speaking prior to talks on economic recovery, Ibec director general Turlough O’Sullivan said that for the foreseeable future, he did not think anyone could contemplate any increases in pay.
