Engineering union to seek 5% pay rise

One of the country’s largest trade unions is to seek pay rises of 5 per cent for its 40,000 members across the public and private sectors.

The Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), which represents electricians and number of other craft worker grades, also wants to recoup all the concessions made to employers on issues such as pensions and working conditions during the past seven years.

Addressing its conference in Kilkenny today, TEEU general secretary Eamon Devoy said: "After seven years of hardship, we are once more witnessing growth and an opportunity for workers to secure their just reward for the sacrifices made to pay for the mistakes of bankers, developers and other irresponsible elements in our society."

While trade unions in the public sector have signalled they will lodge pay claims next year, none have so far publicly put a figure on the rise they will be seeking.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin has indicated the Government will enter talks with public service trade unions next year on the issue of pay.

General secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, said the proposal by the union to lodge pay claims of 5 per cent was "a perfectly good and reasonable idea".

“We have had freezes on wages effectively for quite a number of years now. It is time for the unions to hit back and to try to lodge claims and pursue claims. That is the only way we will get any equality in society and if we do not get equality we are heading for disaster.”

Minister for Jobs and Enterprise Richard Bruton said the issue of public service pay was a matter for Mr Howlin, but the Haddington Road agreement ran until 2016.

He said in the private sector there were still a number of very fragile employers.

The overall drive of his work was to create more employment with decent living standards, he said.

“Whatever we do, we cannot jeopardise that that . We still have 11 per cent unemployment.”

In his address to the conference, Mr Devoy also suggested employers that breached agreements and were involved in disputes in Ireland could face action abroad.

"We are also learning how to harness our collective power creatively, not alone nationally but across the world through the new alliances we are building with the Global Power Trade Union Congress, IndustriALL Global Union, the Building and Woodworkers International, and the United Association of Plumbers, Pipefitters, Steam Fitters, Sprinkler Fitters, Service Technicians and Apprentices of the USA, Canada and Australia. "

"Our movement will co-ordinate its activities across Europe, North America and Australasia so that we can serve claims and, if necessary, take strike action that brings the consequences of breaching agreements to the door, not alone of the main contractor in any dispute, but that of sub-contractors, clients and spurious employment agencies they may try to hide behind."

Mr Devoy said the outburst of anger over water charges had put the Government on notice that people would no longer accept austerity policies that put the burden for paying off the bankers debts on the backs of ordinary citizens.

“But this is not just about extra taxes, it is calling a halt to the legacy of decades of deregulation that has seen workers’ rights eroded while the wealthy are given a free ride.”

He said people were angry, but that this anger needed “to be directed constructively at those responsible, not at ordinary workers, who are trade unionists and employees simply trying to do their jobs and make ends meet like everyone else”.

Mr Devoy said while former minister for the environment Phil Hogan had gone to Europe with "€336,446 in his saddle bags as an EU Commissioner this year", ordinary workers in Irish Water were being pilloried, obstructed and even threatened with violence over a so-called "bonus" that will actually meant they would forego incremental pay rises in future.

Mr Devoy said an atmosphere of fear should not be created that allowed Irish Water, or any other company, to unilaterally tear up employment contracts and force workers to do more for less.

“There was a time when most workers were members of trade unions and could negotiate decent rates of pay and conditions, raising living standards generally and giving them a fair share of the national wealth they had created.

“But successive governments have facilitated ruthless, anti-union firms in eliminating collective bargaining from many workplaces so that today the only way in which thousands of working people, and thousands more who are locked out of the labour market, can voice their anger or seek a fairer share of the nation’s wealth is by taking to the streets.

“We are putting the Government on notice that we expect it to honour its commitment in the programme it adopted in 2011 that it will ‘reform the current law on employees’ right to engage in collective bargaining . . . so as to ensure compliance by the State with recent judgements of the European Court of Human Rights’.”