SOUTH Dublin County Council has asked SIPTU and the AGEMOU to call off the strike which has prevented the collection of refuse from 66 000 households for the past week. The dispute is over the phasing in of new routes for a "wheelie bin" system.
The county manager, Mr Frank Kavanagh, said in a statement yesterday that both sides should meet under an agreed independent chairman to resolve their differences. In the meantime, the refuse workers should resume collect ions.
He added that the agreement reached on the introduction of "wheelie bins" last December had a clause providing for such adjudication in a dispute. Mr Kavanagh called on both unions to use the procedure to resolve their differences.
However, a SIPTU branch secretary, Mr John Glennon, said last night he was not aware of any such clause and it was certainly not in the copy of the document given to his members when they voted for the new terms. He said the union had already offered to go to arbitration, using the services of a former rights commissioner, Mr Stephen Treacy, who had successfully arbitrated on the introduction of a "wheelie bin" system to the Fingal county council area, but this had been rejected.
He also said that since the introduction of longer routes with fewer crews, 25 surplus refuse staff were "picking up bits of, paper along the sides of the road and putting them in black plastic bags". These staff could be redeployed to help cope with the backlog of refuse while talks took place. Mr Glennon said he thought the differences could be resolved within two weeks.
The council is understood to, want to use another chairman for the talks, who has acted for both sides in the past. It wants the existing refuse crews to operate the new routes while talks take place.
A spokesman for the council, said yesterday 67 of the 102 employees involved on the new routes had been meeting targets and had been paid the £1,000 lead in bonus provided for in December's agreement.