Talks with the Labour Relations Commission over a dispute relating to the payment of Polish contractors at the ESB's Moneypoint power plant in Co Clare have finished today without resolution.
Unions are now being briefed on the talks, which will resume in Dublin at 2pm tomorrow.
Eamon Devoy of the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) said that if tomorrow's talks fail to reach a resolution to the dispute, the unions will place pickets on the plant from 7am on Thursday morning.
Eamon Devoy, TEEU
The TEEU warned today that the issue of arrears due to 200 Polish workers must be addressed urgently if escalation in the ESB dispute is to be avoided. Workers have not been paid in over six weeks by Polish company ZRE, one of the subcontractors involved in a €384 million contract at the giant plant.
The union and the ESB management held the talks with the Labour Relations Commission in Ennis today in an attempt to resolve the dispute over the payment of wages and job security for workers on an environmental refitting project at the Moneypoint station.
The union said Lentjes, the main contractor on the power station site is expected to attend tomorrow's talks. It was not represented today as it said it did not have any representative in Ireland with the authority to attend, the TEEU said.
Mr Devoy said today's talks could best be described as "a game of pass the parcel, with the ESB blaming Lentjes and ZRE Katowicz for the problem and ZRE Katowicz blaming Lentjes".
"At least we will have all of them together in the one place tomorrow so there will be nowhere to hide," he said.
"The 200 Polish workers who have been left stranded without six weeks pay or jobs deserve better than this. If there is no progress tomorrow pickets will be placed on Moneypoint from 7 am on Thursday.
"This is the third time the ESB has been involved in this type of situation. We are no longer prepared to accept elaborate management games of snakes and ladders where vulnerable migrant workers always seem to end up back at 'Start' and told, if they don't like it, to leave the country."
Mr Devoy added: "The ESB, Lentjes and ZRE Katowicz have been impervious to appeals to do the decent thing by these men. Therefore this union is holding them collectively responsible for the failure to pay the arrears or honour the other statutory entitlements of these workers. The strike notice issued applies to all three companies and the dispute will be conducted on that basis."
The TEEU is resisting a new subcontractor coming in and insists there must be an agreement over wages owed and job security for the 200 foreign staff.
While the TEEU has warned a strike could disrupt power supplies, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, said he was "hopeful it would not come to that".
Mr Begg said the dispute was eminently "fixable" and that 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 delivered a letter to the ESB containing the strike notice.