OFFICE staff at Irish Life have called for the intervention of the Employer Labour Conference in the 12 week dispute involving the company's 300 strong sales force. It says both sides should accept the conference's findings as binding.

The call for arbitration comes as management has given an ultimatum to the striking sales staff to accept new posts under its restructuring proposals by May 6th. A company spokesman said yesterday that Irish Life acknowledged the seriousness and good faith with which the proposal was made and would be considering it tomorrow.

MSF is also considering the proposal and is expected to call a meeting of the 300 members in dispute at Portlaoise by next Tuesday or Wednesday to discuss it.

Meanwhile, 350 MSF members at Norwich Union have voted to accept settlement terms to their dispute over restructuring. This reduces the number of redundancies required by the company's Transformation Project, which would centralise operations in Dublin.

The dispute led to a week of "non cooperation" by staff in the run up to Easter, before negotiations on a settlement formula was worked out for balloting. The company had originally proposed to make 48 people redundant as a result of its decision to centralise administration and business processing functions in Dublin.

The settlement proposals ensure there will be no compulsory redundancies before October 31st, and MSF deputy national secretary Mr Jerry Shanahan said the union was confident that the package "will obviate the need for any involuntary redundancies".