Train-drivers are to stage a national stoppage on Sunday, July 12th, the day thousands of sports fans are scheduled to travel to Dublin to see the Tour de France.
The action will affect all rail services, including DART and suburban trains.
The decision to stop the trains was taken in Dublin last night at a three-hour meeting of the National Locomotive Drivers' Committee. The drivers say Iarnrod Eireann has failed to meet demands for talks on what they insist are "inhuman" conditions of service.
The cross-union group, while having no official status as an industrial forum, includes some leading activists from the two main rail unions, SIPTU and the National Bus and Rail Union.
Crucially, the committee represents 85 to 90 per cent of Iarnrod Eireann's 350 drivers who, it argues, "have been treated with contempt by the company for long enough".
A spokesman for the group, Mr Brendan Ogle, said after the meeting: "The committee unanimously decided to instruct all our colleagues within the grid to take a full rest day on Sunday, July 12th. The effect of this action will be that no drivers will be available for duty between midnight on Saturday and midnight on that day. Every driver will already have worked a full roster in the course of the week.
"Immediately after July 12th we'll review the effectiveness of the action and decide on whatever additional steps are necessary to secure meaningful negotiations."
The drivers earn £28,000 a year on average, about half of which is overtime. They are unhappy with the amount of "unsocial hours" they are required to work, particularly on Sundays. "We are looking for quality time off and a consolidated financial package to reflect the responsibility of the job," said Mr Ogle. "The unions are looking for £33,000 for us. If the management are concerned about any shortfall, we have proposals of our own, linked to productivity, that we are certain can work."
The committee claims that management has repeatedly re fused to meet drivers' representatives to discuss their grievances. Mr Ogle stressed that the drivers' action was separate from the ongoing negotiations between management and unions on the Iarnrod Eireann viability plan. While they were fully behind their respective unions at these negotiations, the chronic dissatisfaction among drivers over their conditions was a special and separate issue.
A spokesman for Iarnrod Eireann said last night that the drivers, through their unions, were due to attend week-long talks under the proposed viability plan from August 17th to 21st.
Mr Ogle, while conceding that these talks were scheduled, insisted that this was part of the normal management-union dialogue on the plan and did not belie the committee's assertion that the management was refusing to talk on matters of specific concern to the drivers' pressure group. He regretted any disruption to the travelling public, especially during the Tour de France, but added: "Any Sunday we decided to take off would have affected the public".
The NLDC was not a militant group, he insisted. None of its members belonged to any political party: "They don't have the time". There was no agenda to disrupt the ongoing restructuring talks.
"No industrial action along these lines has been taken at Iarnrod Eireann since 1975, which proves that we are not militant," he said.