Business

Unite members picket sites over austerity-era cuts

Union say it will continue pickets until employers ‘meaningfully’ engage

Unite members picket outside outside the Echelon DUB10 data centre project in Clondalkin. Union members working for employers who belong to the Mechanical Engineering & Building Services Contractors' Association (Mebsca) downed tools on Friday morning in their ongoing fight to reverse an austerity-era cut to ‘travel time’. Mebsca employers are carrying out work on the data centre site. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times
Unite members picket outside outside the Echelon DUB10 data centre project in Clondalkin. Union members working for employers who belong to the Mechanical Engineering & Building Services Contractors' Association (Mebsca) downed tools on Friday morning in their ongoing fight to reverse an austerity-era cut to ‘travel time’. Mebsca employers are carrying out work on the data centre site. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times
Fiona Keeley
Fri Oct 25 2024 - 17:14

Members of the Unite trade union who work for employers who are part of the Mechanical Engineering and Building Service Contractors’s Association (Mebsca) picketed the Echelon DUB10 data centre on Friday to secure reversal of austerity-era travel allowances cuts, which happened in 2010.

This is the union’s seventh day of industrial action in a seven-week period and the protest involves plumbers, pipe fitters, welders, and their associated apprentices.

The pickets have take place “at different sites around the country, so we’ve done the likes of Intel, Pfizer in Grange Castle, Pfizer in Ringaskiddy”, said James McCabe, regional officer for Unite.

Mr McCabe said employees are willing to engage with employers on the issue and said that “dialogue is what will resolve this”.

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. The restoration of the travel allowance would be worth 12.8 per cent of basic pay to union members, Mr McCabe said. Workers took pay cuts of up to 24 per cent in 2010, due to the financial crisis which began in 2008, Mr McCabe pointed out.

Mr McCabe said Mebsca employers “bear full responsibility for prolonging this dispute” by refusing to negotiate with the union.

In August, union members voted in favour of industrial action in pursuit of a pay increase. So far Mesbca and its parent organisation, the Construction Industry Federation, have not engaged with the union on the issue.

General secretary of Unite Sharon Graham said members have been counting the cost of the pay cuts “for well over a decade, while employers have seen their turnover skyrocket”.

“Industrial action is the last step for any worker in this State to take, and industrial action will continue if employers refuse to meaningfully engage,” Mr McCabe said.

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