LUAS WORKERS ARE set to go on strike on St Patrick’s Day.
This relates to a dispute between employees and company Transdev over pay.
Transdev is a private company that operates the Luas under a contract awarded by the National Transport Authority and Transport Infrastructure Ireland.
There are also plans in place to stop services on Thursday and Friday of this week, as well as 8 March.
Speaking this afternoon, managing director Gerry Madden said that he was “shocked and disappointed” to hear of the plans.
Transdev has said that the pay claims being made by Siptu’s are “extreme” and that it is willing to discuss smaller pay increases, and that ”normal pay demands in the public and private sector are between 1% and 3%”.
The pay increases being sought by Siptu would see workers’ pay increase by between 8.5% and 53.8% over a five-year period depending on pay scale and Transdev have said that this would cost them an additional €30 million.
Transdev lost €700,000 in 2015 and has predicted further losses for this year.
In a statement last month, Siptu organiser John Murphy said that Transdev had “failed to show any initiative in the effort to find an agreed resolution to the dispute”.
Management representatives merely reiterated a previously stated position that our members cannot expect to receive pay rises over the next five years and that any rise that might be granted would be limited to an increase in the Consumer Price Index.
The move follows industrial action earlier this week that saw services stopped for 48 hours.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say