A SECOND worker at a Co Kildare food company has gone on hunger strike as part of a lengthy dispute with management over the sacking of three members of staff.
Former Offaly All-Ireland footballer John Guinan yesterday joined shop steward Jim Wyse on hunger strike outside the Green Isle Foods plant in Naas. Mr Wyse has been on hunger strike for the past week.
Some 13 maintenance craft workers have been on strike since last summer in protest over the dismissals .
The Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) said the sacking of the three workers was linked directly to an incident in which a private management file on cutbacks was sent in error to an employee, who shared the material with colleagues.
However, yesterday, in its first extensive public comments on the case, Green Isle Foods claimed the dismissals related to breaches of its IT and copyright policies.
The finance director of the company, JJ Ryan, said that following an external examination of its IT systems arising from the incident over the confidential data, the company discovered that 13 engineers had received multiple e-mails from a common external source containing extreme adult material. The general secretary–designate of the TEEU, Eamon Devoy, said the cases were absolutely linked and the same people were involved in both incidents.
He said that the material in the e-mails that had been referred to by the company was of the type that could be found in a normal situation in any office or factory.