THREE Army teams are providing an emergency lifts maintenance service at the Ballymun flats complex in Dublin, where a strike has entered its sixth week.
By Chris Dooley,
Industry and Employment
Correspondent
Lifts engineers withdrew emergency cover last week after the Army was engaged at the request of Dublin City Council.
However, the strikers, members of the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union, withdrew a plan to place "mass pickets" on the complex. That action had been threatened in response to a proposal by the strikers' employer, Pickerings Lifts, to hire workers from abroad to replace those on strike.
Mr Arthur Hall, the union's eastern regional secretary, said pickets could have affected other workers and caused a loss of services to residents. However, the strike committee would have to review its position early in the new year if there was no resolution to the dispute. About 30 workers are on strike over what the union claims was the company's failure to adhere to agreed procedures before it dismissed an employee.
The company, however, says there was no agreed procedure for the circumstances involved, and it had acted "entirely in line with all statutory codes and with due process".
Relations between the two sides have become increasingly strained since the strike began. A national two-hour stoppage in support of their colleagues at Pickerings by TEEU members last week was described as "nonsensical and nothing short of disgraceful" by the company.
Pickerings has also accused the union of picketing company sites unlawfully and has served legal proceedings. Mr Hall said the TEEU would contest the claim in the courts.
A Defence Forces spokesman said the Army teams would remain in place as long as they had a Government mandate to do so.