IN AN important judgment with implications for industrial relations disputes, the High Court says electricians union the TEEU may place pickets outside flats in Ballymun. This arises from a five-month industrial dispute which has left most of the flats without working lifts.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy ruled that once the pickets were moved to the nearby public pavement alongside the flats, they would be lawful under section 11.1 of the Industrial Relations Act 1990 as the Ballymun premises were where the electricians’ employer, Pickerings, worked or carried on business when the pickets were first placed last February.
She also accepted, on evidence, that the picketing was peaceful, in furtherance of a trade dispute with Pickerings under the 1990 Act and involved persons who had worked at the Ballymun premises exclusively for many years.
While it was an unfortunate consequence that “extreme hardship” had been inflicted on Ballymun tenants, that outcome was not the objective of the TEEU and was of regret to it, the judge added.
The pickets were placed on February 4th in a dispute between the union and Pickerings, a lift maintenance company, over the redundancy of seven employees in Ballymun. It was alleged that Pickerings failed to implement the “last- in-first-out” principle when selecting employees for redundancy and refused to pay extra-statutory redundancy to those being let go.
Last March, Dublin City Council terminated the maintenance contract of Pickerings because of the pickets, then sought court orders restraining the pickets, complaining it was not a party to the dispute with Pickerings but the effect was it could not get the lifts repaired.
About 450 families, and four wheelchair-bound individuals, are affected as most of the lifts in nine remaining eight-storey blocks of flats and in the 14-storey Plunkett Tower are not working.
The council has engaged Army personnel to repair the lifts but it could take six months to do so.
In her reserved judgment yesterday, Ms Justice Laffoy said the core issue was the interpretation of section 11.1 of the Act, related to peaceful picketing. It was “extraordinary”, in the 20 years since the Act came into being, that this was the first time the matter had been considered in a substantive action.
There also appeared to be “a hole” between various provisions of the Act, she added.
The issue was whether the Oireachtas intended picketers to have the protection of section 11.1 if their employer was working or carrying on business when the picketing began, even if the employer later ceased working there.
The test was whether the employer “works or carries on business” at the date the picketing began, she ruled. If the test was satisfied, the picketing was lawful provided other requirements of the 1990 Act were met. In this case, the test was satisfied.
Ms Justice Laffoy ruled the Ballymun flats were a place where Pickerings worked and carried on business when the pickets began on February 4th. She also found the contract between Pickerings and the council was terminated from March 25th, after which Pickerings no longer worked or carried on business at the premises.
