UP TO 50 per cent of unionised employers in the country have now agreed to pay wage increases agreed under the terms of the national pay deal negotiated last autumn, trade union leaders said yesterday.
Speaking after a meeting of the private sector committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), its secretary Eamon Devoy of the Technical, Engineering Electrical Union (TEEU) said that in addition a further 20 per cent of employers had engaged in a process surrounding the increases.
The chairman of the committee, Jerry Shanahan of Unite, told The Irish Timeslast night that up to 90 per cent of employers in the financial sector, employing 50,000 to 60,000, were now compliant with the agreement.
He said that in companies such as Bank of Ireland, Hibernian, Allianz and Standard Life the agreement terms have been met.
Unite is planning to place pickets next Monday, during the Ictu national day of action, on New Ireland Assurance which it claims did not engage meaningfully in relation to the increases.
The company has denied this assertion.
In a statement issued after its meeting yesterday, the Ictu private sector committee said that the planned industrial action on March 30th was part of a campaign targeting “rogue employers” who refuse to either pay the terms of the national agreement or to engage with unions.
However, the country’s largest craft union, the TEEU, has taken a stronger line and said it will be calling on all of its 45,000 members to participate in the Ictu’s day of action on March 30th – including those in companies that were compliant with the national agreement.
Unions say that since they began balloting members on strike action as part of the Ictu campaign there has been a surge in the number of employers who had either met the terms of the deal or who had engaged in a process with them. Unite last night issued an expanded list of companies and organisations that would be subject to industrial action on Monday as part of the Ictu campaign.
It said that since ballots of members “notice of strike action has been served by Unite on a number of employers including New Ireland Assurance, Enterprise Ireland, Glaxo Smithkline Beecham, the Health Service Executive, the National Standards Authority of Ireland and Aer Lingus”.
Unite regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said: “It was the Government and the employer representative groups that walked away from their own agreement. A substantial number of employers themselves have agreed to pay while others are involved in the agreed procedures.
“Ironically, Maxol the company of which the president of [employers’ group] Ibec, Tom Noonan, is chief executive is compliant. Surely those employers who have done the right thing should be encouraging others to do likewise, not to withdraw,” he said.
The country’s largest union, Siptu, has not yet issued the results of any of its ballots or set out the details of companies and organisations where pickets would be placed next Monday.
A spokesman for Siptu said it was likely to be tomorrow before detail of the union’s planned strike actions would be known.
