The University of Limerick and MSF, the white-collar union, are at odds over the scope of a promotion initiative for lecturers which was agreed two years ago, the Labour Court has found.
The promotion policy was agreed at the conclusion of negotiations in June 2000. Prior to that time, senior lecturer posts at UL were advertised publicly and were filled through external competition. There was no provision for restricted internal promotion.
The union claims that the university has breached the agreement by withholding posts from the internal promotion mechanism. It is seeking a further 59 internal senior lecturer posts to comply with the agreement.
Appointments at senior lecturer level are currently made at the university by external competition and internal promotion.
The college does not accept that it breached the June 2000 agreement. During conciliation talks it had made a "once-off" offer of 10 promotional opportunities to senior lecturer level in 2002 and 10 in 2003 through the internal promotion mechanism.
This offer had been rejected by MSF, which stated: "The university acted outside the agreement. There is no justification to withhold any posts from the agreed internal promotions procedure in excess of the agreed 20 per cent ratio and to fill them through external competition . . ."
MSF insisted that UL should "allocate the appropriate number of senior lecturer posts" through the internal promotion mechanism to comply with the agreement.
Before June 2000, according to the university, there had been no internal mechanism for promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer. The establishment of a ratio where "no fewer than 80 per cent of posts at senior lecturer level will be retained for the internal promotion mechanism" represented a significant advancement in terms of promotional opportunities.
The deputy chairman of the Labour Court, Mr Kevin Duffy, said that the union believed all promotional appointments made in the relevant period were encompassed by the agreement. However, the university held that previously-allocated promotional posts could not be reserved to the internal promotion mechanism and claimed that only posts arising after the agreement date could come within its scope.
Both sides had to accept responsibility for the resulting misunderstanding, Mr Duffy said. A "practical approach" should be adopted to deal with the matter. The posts in question had now been filled and that could not be reversed. "Equally, the creation of a significant number of additional senior lecturer posts would be impractical."
He recommended that the dispute should be resolved on the basis of the university's offer during the conciliation negotiations.