The Labour Relations Commission and the Labour Court have intervened in the eight-week-old rail dispute involving members of the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association (ILDA) in a move to protect the public interest. It is the first occasion since the Labour Relations Commission was established in 1990 that a joint investigation has been offered and it reflects the seriousness of the situation for the travelling public, for business and tourism and for the train drivers in dispute. But in spite of the unprecedented nature of the intervention, the reaction by the executive secretary of the ILDA, Mr Brendan Ogle, has been largely negative so far.
The two statutory agencies have offered to investigate the issues in dispute, involving new rostering and safety considerations, on condition that ILDA members return to work - if necessary under protest - from next Monday. The parties to the dispute would be allowed to make written submissions and a report would be published by mid-November. The timing of the report would coincide with an adjudication by the Supreme Court into a claim by ILDA for trade union negotiating rights within CIE and, as such, could play an important role in the resolution of this intractable dispute.
A meeting of the executive of the dissident train drivers will take place tomorrow to consider the latest initiative. And while Mr Ogle has spoken of the need for clarification on a number of issues, he has also objected to his members working CIE's new rostering system - on the grounds that it is unsafe. Such inflexibility is a recipe for disaster. And Mr Ogle's statement that his members will not be formally consulted about the offer is a further cause for concern. In any fast-changing and volatile situation an executive normally provides the most effective decision-making process. But when a serious offer of mediation is made after eight weeks of stalemate, the broad membership of ILDA should be consulted before the executive says No.
Successive governments have presided over a public transport system that was allowed to fall into decay and was provided with the lowest subvention levels within the EU. Because of low basic pay, workers came to depend on overtime and other special payments. This, in turn, generated inflexibility, restrictive practices and demarcations within the companies.
We are living with a heritage of low morale, interunion rivalry and poor management practices. But that does not excuse ILDA's recent actions. The present dispute arose when its members rejected new rostering arrangements that were accepted by two-thirds of their colleagues in SIPTU and the National Bus and Railworkers' Union. Their withdrawal of labour has spilled over into the illegal secondary picketing of bus and DART depots.
Earlier this year, an unofficial dispute by permanent way workers brought trains to a standstill. The majority of those workers were SIPTU members who, only days earlier, had signed up to a new national agreement that specifically prohibited such action. A revised offer on pay and conditions was made to those workers yesterday by Iarnrod Eireann in an attempt to prevent official strike action taking place on Monday. That package will be considered by SIPTU's national negotiating committee later today and it is hoped the concessions will be sufficient to avert the strike. In the same vein, the ILDA executive should ask its members to pronounce on the initiative of the Labour Relations Commission and the Labour Court. The public has suffered enough. The initiative offers the only realistic way forward at this time.