LIFT SERVICES at major public facilities across the State are expected to be disrupted today as members of the Technical Electrical and Engineering Union (TEEU) take industrial action.
It is the latest development in a dispute which led to the sacking of 17 lift engineers on June 26th by Otis Lifts, the largest lift company in Ireland.
Among facilities expected to be affected today are hospitals, shopping centres, apartment and office blocks, and industrial plants.
TEEU assistant general secretary Arthur Hall said yesterday “the Labour Court issued a recommendation on May 21st detailing how redundancies should be implemented. We deferred industrial action for a week to facilitate talks with the company but these proved futile.”
He said Otis “decided to ignore the substance of the court’s recommendation, which proposed that it seek voluntary redundancies in the first place and if compulsory redundancies were deemed necessary then the principle of first-in, last-out would apply. This is the norm throughout the lift industry in Ireland, and one accepted by its major competitors.”
Otis agreed to negotiate on this basis “but has refused to entertain voluntary redundancies, and has put its own unique definition on what constitutes first-in, last out”.
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