ESB, teachers and HSE staff gearing up for strike misery
HARD-PRESSED families face a sweltering summer of transport stoppages, health service disputes and maybe even power cuts, culminating in the threat of school strikes, industry experts fear.
The news comes as the country’s top industrial relations chief, Kieran Mulvey, warned of growing worker unrest. The director general of the Workplace Relations Commission said: ‘We are on a slow ticking time bomb to September.’
Strikes or working-to-rule will be on the horizon at the ESB, primary and second-level schools and Iarnród Éireann’s Dart service as the Luas row grinds on. The ESB workers have voted down a proposed 5% pay rise, spread over two and a half years, while Irish Water faces industrial unrest over fears it may be wound up, with potentially over 500 redundancies.
The Luas dispute has also escalated, with Siptu drivers announcing four more strike days in April, while the company that runs the trams, Transdev, has decided to directly challenge the striking drivers by providing bus transport on St Patrick’s Day for up to 90,000 passengers.
On top of this, Dart drivers have threatened strikes in three weeks, if the state rail company increases the frequency of Dart train services without the prior approval of Siptu and the National Bus & Rail Union.
Meanwhile, Impact and Siptu union hospital workers at St James’s in Dublin are planning their own disruption over plans for a €10 weekly charge for car parking spaces.
And nearly 40,000 primary school teachers in the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation last week voted, by a 93% majority, for a ban on supervisory roles and ‘whole school evaluation’ measures, which monitor schools and teachers’ performance. They want a restoration of these roles with special pay top-ups in schools where a recruitment ban has halted the appointments for the past eight years. Second level teachers in the ASTI and TUI unions have rejected the Lansdowne Road pay deal and will not get the restoration of special supervision payments, as well as a 2% overall pay rise from next September.
At a conference organised by Industrial Relations News, in UCD on Thursday, human resources managers spoke of rising workplace tensions and a trend towards 2% pay rises.
However, many staff are facing steadily rising costs, whether for accommodation, childcare, insurance or educa- tion. Rents have risen by 30% in four years, while up to half of private sector workers have received pay rises of about 4% or less over the same period.
While tens of thousands of workers have not had pay rises for eight years some higher skilled people are being offered special ‘top-ups’ to keep them from leaving.
A survey of nearly 600 HR managers, commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development,
‘A slow ticking time bomb to September’ Pay demands as costs are steadily rising
shows half of employers intend to provide a 2.7% pay rise this year. The survey also shows 47% of companies plan to increase their workforce.
The research found that pay increases as part of a counteroffer to staff intending to move on was most evident in large organisations with over 250 employees.