The Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) announced last night it would begin balloting early next week for strike action in the electrical contracting sector.
The union held 24 meetings across the State last night to discuss the legal challenge by a newly formed employers’ body, the National Electrical Contractors Ireland (NECI), to a pay agreement for the sector.
The NECI and several other contractors recently obtained a temporary High Court injunction to stop the implementation of a Labour Court pay award agreed by the union with the main employers through a Registered Employment Agreement (REA).
The union said it will ballot members for strike action against employers who refuse to pay a €1.05 an hour cost-of-living increase due since April 1st.
The TEEU said the ballot was expected to be “overwhelmingly in favour” of industrial action, and that action would entail pickets at hundreds of workplaces, including the ESB and sites where contract work is under way and employers are not prepared to pay the agreed rates.
TEEU Assistant General Secretary Dan Miller said today the NECI was not representative of the industry and that the union would not allow it to use its High Court challenge to the REA to delay payment of a “badly needed cost of living increase to over 10,000 workers”.
He added such agreements were a “tried and tested system” for setting pay and conditions in the electrical contracting industry for over 60 years.
“What we are witnessing here is another example of a new breed of employer prepared to tear up long standing voluntary agreements and resort to the courts to drive down workers rights and living standards,” Mr Miller said.
“However, they are misled if they think these tactics will buy them time in terms of having to pay increases already agreed for the industry by contractors representing the majority of employees and the TEEU."
Defending the High Court action on the employment agreement, Denis Judge, one of the founding members of the NECI, said the organisation was not against electricians getting paid but was seeking a “fair and transparent agreement” that was not city-skewed.
Mr Judge warned that any strike action would be undesirable and lead to “massive unemployment” among electricians.
He said that an improved pay-grading system and ratio of apprentices to experienced electricians were core issue, as the traditional 2:1 ratio of apprentice to master had fallen to ratios of 30 and 40 to one during the "Celtic Tiger" years.
This trend, Mr Judge continued, had seen poorly trained electricians qualify “who were being paid 75 cent per hour less than a man with 10 years’ experience,” with implications of potentially hazardous work.
