Staff at CRC to ballot on industrial action in dispute over pensions

Staff at the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) in Dublin are to ballot for industrial action in a dispute over pensions.

The pension scheme for staff at the CRC collapsed last month and the trade union Impact said on Tuesday that industrial action seemed "inevitable" unless agreement could be reached with management on the introduction of new arrangements equivalent to those previously in place.

The union said that the CRC board and management unilaterally stopped making payments into the pension fund last month.

It said management subsequently issued notice of termination of the contributory pension scheme, which covered almost 150 current and former staff.

The union said staff who are members of the scheme had all been paying into it for a minimum of 15 years. It said staff contributed 10 per cent of their gross pay to the pension fund.

Validity

Impact said it wanted to carry out its own actuarial assessment of the pension fund and test the legal validity of the closure of the scheme. However it said management had not agreed to this proposal.

“The agency claims the fund is carrying a €2.5 million deficit – less than 7 per cent of its liabilities. But Impact believes the scheme is not in deficit to this extent.”

Impact official Ian McDonnell said the union was willing to negotiate measures to close any deficit that exists.

“However, we are not going to accept that management can simply cancel the hard-saved pension provision that its staff have built up without bothering to look for ways of salvaging the scheme. Management’s disproportionate handling of a manageable deficit, and its thoroughly insensitive treatment of staff, are totally inept,” he said.