TWO DUBLIN city hotels being picketed over their efforts to employ some of their existing workers at the new lower minimum wage rate have secured temporary High Court injunctions imposing conditions on how picketing is being conducted, including limits on numbers.
Pickets were placed by the trade union Siptu outside the Davenport and Mont Clare hotels on Lower Merrion Street, Dublin, in a dispute involving five workers who refused to sign new contracts which would have the effect of reducing their pay – the previous national minimum wage rate of €8.65 an hour – to the new minimum rate of €7.65 an hour.
Persian Properties, trading as O’Callaghan Hotels, claims the Industrial Relations Act 1990 is being breached on grounds that persons other than workers and trade union officials are taking part in the pickets. Siptu disputes the claim.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy yesterday granted O’Callaghan Hotels a number of orders including an interim injunction restraining Siptu having any more than six people on the pickets outside the Davenport and Mont Clare hotels at any one time.
The hotel’s operators also secured orders requiring that any pickets of the hotels should be conducted by its employees and an appropriate number of Siptu officials within the meaning of section 11 of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act.
The court further restrained Siptu from carrying out any picketing in a manner inconsistent with section 11 of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act. The judge said she was satisfied to grant the injunctions on the basis they did not seek to prevent workers from carrying out a picket in what was accepted to be a legitimate dispute.
Marguerite Bolger SC, for O’Callaghan Hotels, said the picketing began last week in a dispute over the company’s decision to implement a pay cut on the workers.
Ms Bolger said the company did not want to stop the picketing but wanted to put certain conditions, in accordance with the 1990 Act, on the manner in which the picketing was being conducted.
While the number of hotel workers involved in the dispute was five, the number on the picket has risen to 20 people, she said. Nineteen were counted on the picket yesterday. She said some of those involved in picketing were employees of an unrelated firm who were not entitled to be on the picket.
Ms Bolger said there had been correspondence with Siptu in relation to the numbers and identity of those involved in the picket. Siptu had denied any wrongdoing and said it had only invited workers and union officials to take part in the picket.