Staff at the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs pensions office in Sligo embarked on industrial action yesterday in a dispute over an afternoon tea break. Workers at the decentralised office, which has 420 employees, refused to answer phone calls. The workers' union, the CPSU, had given management until February 1st to honour an agreement it claimed they had last November.
Central to this was its demand for a 15 minute tea break for staff working for three hours in the afternoon. Mr Kevin Gaughran of CPSU said management had been slow to implement these recommendations.