The Labour Relations Commission is to hold talks with the ESB and the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) in Ennis this morning, following the issuing of strike notice by the union yesterday.
The TEEU is seeking assurance about the payment of wages and job security for workers on an environmental refitting project at the ESB's Moneypoint generating station in Co Clare.
The workers, employed by sub-contractor ZRE Katowicz (Ireland) Construction, were told on Friday last there would be no work for them this week. Some have not been paid since the beginning of September.
The main contractor on the €350 million refit of Moneypoint is German-based company Lentjes, which was hired by ESB International.
While the TEEU has warned a strike could disrupt power supplies, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) David Begg said he was "hopeful it would not come to that".
Mr Begg said the dispute was eminently "fixable" and he thought the way forward might be for the Labour Relations Commission to bring the subcontractors to the table alongside the ESB and the TEEU.
Following the breakdown of talks yesterday the TEEU immediately delivered a letter to the ESB containing the strike notice and saying: "A very serious and disturbing development has taken place on the ESB Moneypoint site, with the consequences that approximately 200 workers, members of the TEEU, are being displaced from their place of work to be replaced by other workers without consultation or discussion with their union.
"It appears from our information that it is proposed to replace the workers by engaging a new subcontractor with an alternative workforce in breach of your legal obligations under TUPE [Transfer of Undertakings Regulations], and in a disgraceful disregard of any obligations to the employees or procedures."
The letter adds that the workers have not been paid their wages for more than six weeks and "have been denied some of their other legal entitlements for over a year. As a result some face destitution."
While the letter expressed the view that the union believed the impasse could only be resolved by direct dialogue, it warned that "failing this, the union will initiate industrial action by, in the first instance, placing pickets on the Moneypoint site".
But the ESB said it had fulfilled all of its obligations to the workers. In a statement the company said: "ESB stresses that it has met all its obligations including proper payments to its contractor Lentjes who subcontracted ZRE to carry out mechanical works on the project.
"ESB at all times acted in accordance with the terms of its contract and at all times upheld Irish and EU employment law."
While the union insisted TEEU action could spread to other ESB generating plants or could result in the larger Siptu union at Moneypoint refusing to pass a picket, the ESB refused to comment on whether industrial action could disrupt power supplies resulting in blackouts. A spokeswoman for the ESB rejected an assertion by the union that Moneypoint supplied up to 40 per cent of the State's electricity needs.
She said the figure was closer to 25 per cent of the State's requirement, or 800 megawatts. She said she didn't know if taking Moneypoint out of the national grid would result in blackouts.
Electricity generation sources said the prospect of blackouts as a result of industrial action was too complex to call. A number of factors, from timing, demand, the availability of back-up generators and even the weather could influence the outcome.
