This article is from page 7 of the 2006-07-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 7 JPG
STAFF at Shannon Aerospace are expected to reject a Labour Court ruling which says they should adopt new work practices.
The 800 employees were told they should cooperate with the new practices in exchange for an increase in wages.
But it’s being predicted that the Labour court ruling will be rejected when the results of a ballot are announced this week.
The Labour Court accepted the findings of an independent report, which said that the company would be in serious financial difficulties if the work practices which they are seeking are not introduced.
But SIPTU, which represents the majority of the workers, holds that the Shannon company is in a position to honour national pay deals because it is in profit.
A spokesman for the company said that it “needs to expand to survive – we need that economy of scale to compete against similar operations in eastern Europe,” he said.
He added that the company is “planning to introduce a manufacturing type system to aircraft maintenance but this will not involve any loss of skills.”
The spokesman also said that while the company is in profit, the current returns to the sole shareholder were inadequate to justify continuing investment in a very competitive international environment.
But he added that there could be a large amount of leeway in relation to pay increases in the future. Having started from a low salary base in 1992, the spokesman said, the company paid separate increments on top of national agreements “to ramp people back up to the norm.”
The union spokeswoman said they would not be making any comment until after the result of the ballot is announced.
Meanwhile, it now looks likely that the Friday deadline for tenders in the sale of the Great Southern hotel group – including the one at Shannon Airport – will be postponed.
The industrial dispute which was referred to the Labour Court last week was at hearing for four hours, but no recommendation is expected until tomorrow (Wednesday).
SIPTU, which represents 700 of the group’s 1,000-strong workforce, has been fighting on issues including payments for voluntary redundancies and pensions.
The union has a mandate for industrial action from its members.
The sale of the hotel chain is now expected to carry a condition that the new owners must offer staff a new pension deal with the same funding rate as the old one.