Shannon Aerospace has secured a temporary High Court injunction restraining Siptu from instructing its members to engage in industrial action against the company, which employs 650 people.
The injunction, returnable to today, was sought by the company arising from its claim that Siptu had instructed its members at the company not to co-operate with, train or assist "production assistants" recruited by the company on a contract basis.
This instruction represented "a very real threat" to Shannon Aerospace's ability to conduct its business properly and seriously damaged its commercial credibility, said Niamh O'Connor, head of human resources, in an affidavit.
Siptu had informed the company on January 11th that an emergency general meeting of the union members at Shannon Aerospace had agreed there would be no co-operation with the new assistants, Ms O'Connor said.
The egm had decided there would be no allocation of work by lead engineers, team leaders or aircraft maintenance technicians; no helping them in their work; no training or instruction by the training department or production training, and no certifying of their work by union members.
Siptu had denied it was involved in industrial action but complained that the decision to recruit the production engineers posed a threat to the jobs of its members and that the production assistant positions were introduced without negotiation.
The company denied that claim, insisting they were recruited to fulfil contracts at busy times when the company was short-staffed. Ms O'Connor said she had informed Siptu that Shannon Aerospace intended to discuss the needs of any future production system with the union before implementation.
Because of the Siptu instruction, the production assistants had to be trained by senior management and could not go on to the factory floor because they were ostracised by Siptu members, Roddy Horan SC, for the company, said.
They had had to go home once their classroom training was finished. As senior managers had to train them, the managers' own work was affected with a knock- on effect on production.
In its action against Siptu, Shannon Aerospace is contending that the union, in issuing its instruction to members, is in breach of the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act and of various agreements with Shannon Aerospace.
These agreements provided that the union would not engage in industrial action unless all alternative means had been exhausted and without a secret ballot vote of all employees who are members of Siptu.
Industrial action, as set out in that agreement, included strikes, go-slows, overtime bans "and all other actions designed to put pressure on management", said Mr Horan.
Granting the interim injunction, Mr Justice Roderick Murphy said he was clearly concerned that the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act, "a watershed" in industrial legislation here, did not appear to have been complied with.