A trade union has said it will place pickets at the ESB generating station at Moneypoint in Co Clare from tomorrow morning if there is no progress in talks in the dispute over the payment of wages and job security for around 200 Polish workers at the plant.
Talks between the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), ESB management and two contractors engaged on an environmental refitting at Moneypoint are to resume at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in Dublin today.
In a statement yesterday the TEEU said that four hours of talks held under the auspices of the LRC in Ennis yesterday had failed to resolve the dispute.
TEEU general secretary designate Eamon Devoy said the talks yesterday could best be described as "a game of pass the parcel". He said the ESB had sought to blame a German-based contractor Lentjes and another contractor ZRE Katowicz for the problem, while ZRE Katowicz blamed Lentjes.
Representatives of Lentjes were not at the talks in Ennis but are expected to participate today.
Lentjes was hired by ESB International as the main contractor for the €380 million environmental refit operation at Moneypoint. The 200 Polish staff work mainly as scaffolders and welders for ZRE, which was engaged as a sub-contractor by Lentjes.
ZRE's contract was terminated at the end of last week by Lentjes.
The TEEU, which represents the Polish workers, said some of the workers had not been paid since the beginning of September. It also said they had been told last Friday that they no longer had jobs.
The ESB has said it has met all its obligations to the workers, including proper and timely payments to the main contractor Lentjes. A spokeswoman for the ESB said last night it would be participating in the talks at the LRC today and that it could not comment.
The ESB group of unions at Moneypoint is due to meet today to discuss the dispute.
Mr Devoy said the 200 Polish workers "who have been left stranded without six weeks' pay or jobs deserve better". "If there is no progress tomorrow, pickets will be placed on Moneypoint from 7am on Thursday," he said.
Mr Devoy said that the union was "no longer prepared to accept elaborate management games of snakes and ladders where vulnerable migrant workers always seem to end up back at 'Start' and told, if they don't like it, to leave the country".
"The ESB, Lentjes and ZRE Katowicz have been impervious to appeals to do the decent thing by these men.
"Therefore this union is holding them collectively responsible for the failure to pay the arrears or honour the other statutory entitlements of these workers.
"The strike notice issued applies to all three companies and the dispute will be conducted on that basis," he said.
If the TEEU places pickets at Moneypoint tomorrow the official notice period of seven days will not have expired and the union could be putting at risk its immunity under trade union law from being sued by employers.
Mr Devoy said that the law had been written for cases where unions were acting in an untoward manner and employers were behaving themselves. He said that in the current case the reverse was the case.
He said that given the circumstances of the case, the union could not stand idly by.
Union sources have said that some of the workers concerned are facing destitution.
Moneypoint generates about 25 per cent of the country's electricity output. However it is unclear as yet whether any pickets placed on Thursday would lead to power cuts.