Workers to picket Bank of Ireland headquarters

Pickets are to be placed on the Bank of Ireland's headquarters in Dublin today in protest at the company's new pension scheme.

Talks at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) yesterday failed to prevent the union Amicus from proceeding with its plan to picket the bank's HQ on Baggot Street, as well as its Bank of Ireland Life offices on Dawson Street, Dublin.

Bank branches will not be affected and it is likely that most customers of the bank will not be inconvenienced in any way.

"This is primarily a public protest," said Colm Quinlan, regional officer with the union. He said the union has asked bank employees who are members of the Irish Bank Officials Association (IBOA) and Siptu to attend work.

Amicus is to picket the bank's offices in the IFSC, Dublin, on Wednesday of next week.

The new pension scheme, which the bank says is a hybrid of defined benefit and defined contribution pension models, was introduced for new staff last month. The LRC talks yesterday made little progress as the union demanded that the earlier defined benefit scheme first be reintroduced.

The largest union at the bank, the IBOA, held talks on the issue last week at the Labour Court and a ruling is awaited. Mr Quinlan said his union will await the ruling of the court before deciding on its next move. The bank said it was "dismayed" by the decision to take industrial action and said it is strongly committed to market-leading pensions for all employees.

The bank said its new pension scheme is "not a cost saving issue" but is "about securing the future pension arrangements for all employees".

It said about 200 staff with Bank of Ireland Life would be involved in today's industrial action and "disruption to customers should be minimal".

The bank appealed to Amicus to "engage in constructive discussions in the interests of the employees they represent".

It said the union represented more than 300 of the bank's 16,000 staff.

However, Mr Quinlan said the union's membership in the bank was growing and was now close to 500.

"They are professional, administrative and clerical staff. They are not militant, but 93 per cent voted for industrial action because they are not happy that the bank imposed change rather than negotiated change."