LCR22320

FULL RECOMMENDATION

CD/20/279
CCC-164986-20

RECOMMENDATIONNO.LCR22320

SECTION 26(1), INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ACT, 1990

PARTIES :

LEO PHARMA

- AND -

86 MIXED GRADE WORKERS
(REPRESENTED BY SERVICES INDUSTRIAL PROFESSIONAL TECHNICAL UNION)

DIVISION :

Chairman:	Ms O'Donnell
Employer Member:	Ms Connolly
Worker Member:	Mr Bell

SUBJECT:

1.A two-day closure of the plant on the 15and 16February 2020.

BACKGROUND:

2.This dispute relates to the two-day closure of the plant on the 15 and 16 February 2020 for essential ESB upgrade works.

The Union said that Management failed to give adequate notice to the staff.

The Employer said that it has its own generator and investigated the possibility of having power in one building using the generator. Once it was clear that this would not work, the company immediately engaged with the Union.

This dispute could not be resolved at local level and was the subject of a Conciliation Conference under the auspices of the Workplace Relations Commission. As agreement was not reached, the dispute was referred to the Labour Court on the 6 October 2020 in accordance with Section 26(1) of the Industrial Relations Act, 1990.

A Labour Court hearing took place on 7 December 2020.

UNIONS ARGUMENTS:

3. 1. Management failed to give adequate notice to the staff.

2. The Employer should reimburse any monies deducted from members wages.

3. The Employer should return annual leave days deducted from members and pay members or credit annual leave for the hours members as “time-in-lieu”.

EMPLOYER'S ARGUMENTS:

1. The Company had no option but to close the site for 2 days due to essential ESB upgrade works and was unavoidable.2. Significant investigations and efforts were made to fully mitigate any impact on rostered employees by providing suitable alternative work.
3. The Company is not in a financial position to offer unconditional ‘paid time off’ to the impacted employees.

RECOMMENDATION:

The issue in dispute between the parties concerns a two-day closure of the plant on the 15^thand 16^thFebruary 2020. The closure arose from the requirement of the ESB to carry out essential upgrade work. The Union are seeking that the Workers affected by this closure should be paid for that period in line with the hours they would have worked had the closure not occurred.

The Employer informed the Court that in January 2020 they were informed by the ESB of the necessity to carry out essential works. The plant has its own generator, so the employer investigated the possibility of having power in one building using the generator. The Employer felt they could move the affected workers to that building to engage in training and SOP’s type work. However, following a site security and safety risk assessment on the 20^thJanuary 2020 this option was ruled out. The employer contacted the Union Committee on the 27^thJanuary 2020 to advise them of the situation. A number of options that staff could avail of rather than losing pay for the shifts were put forward by management as follows:

a) take annual leave

b) take paid leave and work back the time over the next six months

c) take approved unpaid leave or

d) any combination of the above.

The Union sought unconditional paid leave. The Employer advised that on financial grounds that was not a possibility. There followed an exchange of emails and meetings. All staff were communicated with directly on the 4^thFebruary advising of the shutdown. Following local discussions, a further option emerged that an individual could be paid for the two shifts in exchange for a flat rate payment of the next rostered bank holiday (this would not impact on their legal entitlement in respect of bank holiday pay as they would have already received the payment). The Employer was agreeable to including this option and the vast majority of employees opted to avail of this option.

The Company submitted that it had worked hard to mitigate the impact of the closure, but it was not in a financial position to accede to the unions claim . The Employer has a redundancy programme running in 2020 and 2021 which will see 89 roles being removed from the plant.

The Court having considered the submissions of the parties recommends that the Employer makes the Public holiday option spread over two Public holidays available to the Workers who opted for unpaid leave or Annual leave. The Workers should be given six weeks from the date of this recommendation to indicate if they wish to avail of the option.

The Court so recommends

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court

	Louise O'Donnell
CR	______________________
18 December, 2020	Deputy Chairman

NOTE

Enquiries concerning this Recommendation should be addressed to Ciaran Roche, Court Secretary.