Over 5,000 AIB staff have voted for a package that will ensure shorter working hours and guaranteed job security for the next three years.
Details of the deal, brokered in talks between AIB and the Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA), will be outlined at the IBOA conference in Galway today.
Chief among the other commitments given by the bank is that there will be no rural post office closures within the three-year period of the deal.
The deal, concluding after 12 months with the involvement of industrial relations negotiator Phil Flynn, has been hailed by the IBOA as a "ground breaking three-year partnership agreement".
The contents of the package will ensure that the 5,000 staff - which work at 300 AIB branches countrywide - will have their working week reduced from 36.25 hours to 35. No compulsory redundancies will be instituted in the next three years. AIB has also committed itself to new long-service pay increments of up to €1,500.
Delegates at the IBOA conference have heard IBOA General Secretary Mr Larry Broderick warn that the banking union will continue to oppose future national wage agreements if they fail to address key issues for the trade union movement.
Mr Broderick stated that the withdrawal of the "binding arbitration clause", contained in Sustaining Progressshould be a priority.
- The General Secretary this afternoon called for immediate meeting with the Minister for Justice, the banks and senior Gardai to discuss bank staff concerns over what he dubbed "a spate of bank raids" that have taken place thus far this year. "Bank staff feel vulnerable and helpless in the face of random attacks," Mr Broderick claimed.