A SPOKESMAN has repeated that the Government is willing to discuss giving Telecom workers a higher shareholding in the company than the 5 per cent mentioned by the Minister for Communications, Mr Dukes, this week.
This follows a statement by the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, yesterday that the Labour Party wants the State to retain majority control in Telecom, and wants to give its workers "a significant shareholding" in the company.
Mr Spring was addressing the conference of the Communications Workers' Union in Tralee, where on Thursday night Mr Dukes said he was only prepared to concede 5 per cent equity in return for accepting the £110 million cost-cutting programme, including 2,500 redundancies.
Mr Dukes indicated that this shareholding might be increased in future and offered talks with the CWU early next week.
The spokesman said the Government was prepared to discuss the issue with the union, on the basis that additional employee equity would be paid for "at a fair price".
Trade union leaders had accused Mr Dukes of putting the national agreement at risk by his stance on the proposed employee share option. Angry members of the CWU were talking of taking strike action if they did not achieve a 14.9 per cent share.
Mr Spring warned those with secret privatisation agendas that the Labour Party wanted the State to retain majority control of Telecom and give its workforce a significant shareholding in it.
"Firstly", he said, "the Labour Party, and indeed this Government, believe that the State should maintain majority shareholding control in Telecom Eireann. That, in our view, is in the long-run national strategic interest.
"Other interests and people in various guises may have open or secret full privatisation agendas, and be aiming to create the appropriate climate to achieve them. We do not.
"Secondly, we support the idea of appropriate business strategic alliances in telecommunications and in other State-sponsored bodies when such alliances are in the long-term commercial interests of the firms involved. In this respect, we would wish the strategic alliance undertaken by Telecom well.
"Thirdly, I believe that the sustained profitable development of modern state enterprise in a competitive age depends on constructive partnership, between employees, management and board, and between the enterprise - and its shareholders.
"The competitive environment require an acceptance by employees of a commitment to improvements in quality and efficiency. The acceptance of employers and shareholders, of employees as stakeholders is correspondingly of critical significance.
"What matters in this respect is trust, constructive dialogue, firm and straight bargaining and the appropriate legislative framework.
"I am firmly of the view that collective ownership of shares in enterprise is an important mechanism of stake-holding, where conditions are appropriate and where trade union members wish for it. We will oppose those interests who seek to prevent workers being in a position to exercise their rights."
Later the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Peter Cassells, told the conference that a rejection of the union's bid for an employee share option scheme would be "as a slap in the face for the whole trade union movement".
The trade union movement had pioneered social partnership in this country because it was only by making employees stakeholders in companies that they could undertake the scale of transformation required to prepare for the future. The Telecom Esop proposal marked a watershed in industrial relations in Ireland.
"If it is turned down, those responsible will be guilty of the biggest mistake in the history of industrial relations in this country," he said.
The CWU general secretary, Mr David Begg, said they were talking about workers using their collective strength to gain a strategic shareholding in the company. He said Mr Dukes did not believe in social partnership. "Seeing it fall will have no terrors for him."