Tara mines: Talks to resume at WRC as unions renew call for Government intervention

Management at Boliden Tara Mines are to attend scheduled talks at the Workplace Relations Commission on Friday. The company had earlier suggested it would not be present if a protest by staff at the facility continued.

The unofficial action continued on Thursday at the facility which is due to close at the end of the week with the temporary loss of almost 650 jobs.

A majority of staff at the company are understood to have been participating in what had been described as “a blockade” that started early on Wednesday evening and closed the mine.

The company said that while it was “acutely aware of the difficulty and disruption that the decision to temporarily suspend operations and to place the mine into a care and maintenance period has caused for employees” it was concerned that the disruption to continual maintenance “could jeopardise the current and long-term plans to safeguard the operation”.

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Unite regional co-ordinating officer, Tom Fitzgerald said the protest “should not come as a surprise to anyone,” given the company’s position on the closure itself and the lack of anything like the package of supports provided when lay-offs were last required at the company.

He called for management to delay the closure by a month to allow time for term and Labour court processes to be properly completed.

Though the third day of talks at the WRC are now expected to proceed there is little sense from either side they believe an agreement over the terms on which the closure might proceed can be achieved.

“The only way I can see this getting sorted is through an intervention by the Government to save this critical asset,” said Siptu Divisional Organiser, Adrian Kane.

Earlier, Mr Kane had proposed an emergency motion on the situation at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions biennial congress in Kilkenny. He told delegates: “If ever there was a textbook example for companies of how not to run a dispute, this has been it”.

He also criticised the social welfare provisions for workers finding themselves in the position that Boliden’s staff do. In Sweden, where the parent company is based, he suggested, “80 per cent of the wages of the people laid off would be guaranteed. We have no such protection in this country and so, as it stands at the moment, our members from across the three unions face the prospect of finding themselves on the dole from Monday week on a weekly payment of €220.”

He said the Government had improved on those payments during Covid and the loss of Tara Mines “is seen by the people of Navan and the people of the Northeast as an economic pandemic.”

The motion, which was passed unanimously, was seconded by Tayra Lopes-Lister for Unite and Connect’s Paddy Kavanagh who called on the Government to withdraw the company’s license if there was no progress made and “award it to somebody who does want to mine this viable seam”.

He repeated the union’s call for nationalisation to be also considered.

The company contends that the reason for the closure is that the mine is not viable because of a range of factors including a dramatic increase in the cost of electricity and a fall in the price on international markets of zinc. It says it lost money last year and was on course to lose €100 million in 2023. In addition to the directly employed staff, at least 160 contract workers will be impacted by the closure.