"If this place is going to close I want to make it clear to everyone that it won't be the fault of the unions," SIPTU's Navan branch secretary, Mr Christy McQuillan, said after 10 hours of conciliation talks in the Ardboyne Hotel on Monday failed to narrow the gap between unions and Tara management. He described it as the most frustrating experience of his long career as a trade union representative.

The plant's human resource manager, Mr John Kelly, says the plan devised to save the mine by a joint steering committee of union and management representatives in February 1998 isn't working. Losses soared to $3 million (€2.9 million) in May, compared with $5 million for the first four months of the year, and they are set to exceed the $20 million figure totted up in 1998.

The plunging price of zinc on international markets is driving the losses. Last month, it fell from $980 a ton to $958. The cost of taking zinc out of the ground at Navan is $1,150 a ton.

Over a month ago the company told its unions that it had to bring the price down to $1,000 or less. It set June 1st as the deadline for the introduction of new work patterns that would radically improve productivity. Yesterday the board reluctantly agreed to defer that deadline to allow Labour Court intervention. It does not want to be seen to be wantonly closing Navan's main source of employment.

SIPTU and the other unions at the mine do not dispute the company claim that it is an expensive plant to operate. It is, in fact, the most expensive mine in the Outokompu group as a whole and also costs more than 90 per cent of its competitors.

Even if the new work practices proposed were to reduce the earnings of the miners by between £10,000 (€12,700) and £12,000 (€15,240) a year, as the unions claim, it would still leave them considerably better paid than their counterparts in Arcon's new lead and zinc mine at Galmoy. There the rates of pay are around £20,000 a year compared with £34,000£40,000 at Tara.

Mr McQuillan accepts the differences are significant but argues that Arcon's rates will increase once it gets beyond the start-up phase. Besides, Tara has an estimated three times the reserves of Galmoy and, he argues, mining is different from other industries because the viability of a plant has to be viewed over its total lifespan.

Since it opened 24 years ago it has made profits for its various owners. Between 1988 and 1992 it made nearly $100 million for Outokompu.

Mr McQuillan says the company is using the current drop in prices to push through cuts in pay and changes in working conditions that are not historically justified. He also argues that the mine is currently extracting lowquality ore with around 6.5 per cent concentrates, compared with 8 to 10 per cent normally. Its competitiveness has been undermined by neglect of developmental work in recent years.

The company sees it differently. It says that the only reason 1997 was a good year was that zinc prices were exceptionally high, peaking at $1,600 a ton. Mr Kelly says: "Yes, zinc prices are a concern, but there is not a thing we can do about them. We can control costs." He believes that the changes the company is now trying to push through are not all bad for miners. Besides preserving more than 600 well-paid jobs, the shift changes involve a rolling four-day week roster, instead of the present Monday to Friday pattern.

The four-day week is, however, to be accompanied by longer shifts. The present three-shift roster of eight hours, which is supposed to keep the mine operating non-stop for five days a week, is to be replaced by a two-shift roster with shifts of between nine hours and 10.5 envisaged.

This would allow gaps between shifts so that miners would not be paid while blasting operations take place. However, the overall length of the basic working week would remain unchanged at 39 hours. He says that this is a common pattern for the industry and that miners elsewhere have resisted attempts to introduce five-day working.

Tara cannot actually extend the basic working week without the agreement of the workforce and an exemption under the new Organisation of Working Time Act. Significantly, this is not something the unions would necessarily oppose. Mr McQuillan says that they are also willing to consider reducing the standardised hourly rate from the present £10.58 an hour to £6, provided the system has inbuilt measures that would allow the miners to maintain earning through increased production.

He says the unions have made their own proposals for cutting bonus payments and making other wage savings that would cut costs in this area by £1.4 million, compared with the £1.75 million being sought by the company. They are also willing to accept changes in shift systems that would extend productive working by 103.75 hours, compared with the 105 hours sought by management.

"That is as close as you can get to meeting the other side in a negotiated settlement, but they want everything," he says.

He also disputes the company's argument that the partnership approach has not achieved its targets. He says that by last March they were not only met but exceeded in the key area of metres extracted per man shift. The target had been to raise the rate from 1.2 metres per hour to 1.67, and the workers achieved 1.8.

Mr Kelly does not dispute the SIPTU figures for March but says this was an exceptional month when the workers were trying to meet targets that might result in extra payments. Since then, the situation has deteriorated.

Craft workers and other employees at the plant also have grievances over issues such as annualised hours. These are all contributing to the general malaise. Mr McQuillan traces the mood to the disillusionment that has set in since management abandoned the joint steering committee strategy. Mr Kelly attributes it to fear of the unknown and an unwillingness to face up to the realities of competition.

Last year, Tara Mines was selected to participate with 10 other companies in the Partnership in Enterprise programme, sponsored by the European Commission, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Irish Productivity Centre, IBEC and the ICTU. At the time participants were told the process they were embarking upon would take at least two years to show results.