The board of Tara Mines is expected to determine whether to keep its Navan facility open when it meets today. It will be discussing its attitude towards the Labour Court recommendation to make the plant, which is losing $20 million a year, viable.
SIPTU shop stewards, representing miners, mill workers and other operatives at the mine, are due to meet in the afternoon to consider their attitude to the court's recommendation.
Both sides were reluctant to comment ahead of today's meetings. SIPTU regional secretary Mr Jack O'Connor said the critical period in deciding the future of the mine and its 630-strong work force had now arrived. "The Labour Court recommendation offers a way forward, but there is a great deal of work to be done in a very short space of time, if we are to meet the twin objectives of preserving good-quality employment against the background of a viable mine operation.
"I've no doubt it can be achieved in the context of the Labour Court recommendation, but both sides have to want it to happen," he added.
The human resources manager at Tara, Mr John Kelly, said: "We're giving the recommendation every consideration." He would not be drawn on what the likely decision of the company would be. The board would look at "all the options that are open to us".
When SIPTU shop stewards meet, they will then have to decide whether to recommend the Labour Court recommendation to their members. The craft unions at the mine and MSF, which represents technical, engineering, administrative and clerical staff, are expected to take their lead from SIPTU. Not only is SIPTU the largest union, it represents the groups from whom the most change is being sought.
It will be difficult for management or unions to reject the carefully-crafted Labour Court recommendation without seriously damaging their public commitments to keeping the mine open. The court had been placed in a seemingly impossible position last Friday, when the company put its workforce on "one day" protective notice.
While it had told the court it was committed to keeping the mine open, providing it was made viable, the company had also warned that anything short of full acceptance of its "Tara survival plan" would lead to temporary closure.
In the circumstances, any recommendation endorsing the plan would have had little credibility with the unions. However, if the court had agreed to implement the alternative trade union survival plans and the company closed the mine, this could have seriously undermined the credibility of the court.
Instead, the court decided that "it would be unfortunate if the plant was to close with two proposals on the table, the dispute being on which was to be implemented to ensure the viability of the operation". It suggested that the unions' plans, which they claimed could achieve over 92 per cent of the company's targets, be given a three-month trial. Should the unions fail to meet the targets, they must unconditionally accept the Tara survival plan.