LCR23074

PARTIES:

DIVISION:

SUBJECT:

Payment for adoption of the 2020 Site Manning and Ways of Working Agreement Castlefarm.

BACKGROUND:

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 24 June 2024 in accordance with Section 26(1) of the Industrial Relations Act, 1990.

A Labour Court hearing took place on 12 November 2024.

UNION'S ARGUMENTS.

1. The matter before the Labour Court is related to an agreement between the Union’s members and the company that has not been fully honoured.
2. The payment of €1,500 in two phases in 2020 and 2021 was understood to be an interim arrangement until such time as the company and the Union resolved the payment deficit in the company grade structure.

EMPLOYER'S ARGUMENTS.

1. The agreement, as signed by all applicable operators, following extensive discussions involving all relevant employees and SIPTU representatives, explicitly calls out the €1500 gross payments (processed in September 2020 and May 2021) as one-off payments – thus, there is no basis for ongoing payments.
2. Project Compete applies to approximately 230 employees within the Society and therefore, it is inappropriate and unfeasible to accede to the union’s request to address individual elements of Project Compete for 39 people where an additional 191 employees would be impacted if any changes were made to the Project Compete agreement.

RECOMMENDATION:

Background to the Dispute

The within dispute concerns a group of thirty-nine operatives (‘the Workers’) based at Dairygold’s (‘the Company’) Castlefarm site at which it operates a processing plant for milk and whey.

In 2020, the Company entered into a series of meetings with the Workers at the site to agree a number of operational changes. An agreement was reached between the Company and the affected Workers, and each Worker signed to that effect. There was no direct engagement with the Workers’ trade union (SIPTU) in relation to the matter. It was clearly agreed that the Workers would be paid two once-off payments of €1500.00 each. Those payments were made to the Workers in April 2020 and April 2021, respectively.

The Workers are seeking an ongoing payment of €1500.00 per annum for 2022 and 2023 and into the future along with a review of the grading structure for operatives at the Castlefarm site.

The Union’s Submission

The Union submitted that the arrangement arrived at locally in 2020 does not constitute a collective agreement in circumstances where it had not been balloted on. It also maintains that the Workers’ understanding is that the annual payments of €1500.00 would be ongoing until such time as a review of their grading structure had been carried out.

The Company’s Submission

The Company submits that, as all thirty-nine Workers in question had signed the document in which the operational changes had been outlined in 2020, there was no requirement for a ballot on the matter. It further submitted that the two payments of €1500.00 each were intended to be one-off ‘goodwill’ payments in 2020 and 2021 respectively and it had made no commitment to continue those payments beyond 2021. Finally, it submits that it cannot look at grading structure for operatives on one single site in isolation and that this was an issue that was more appropriate addressed as part of the company-wide pay negotiation process currently underway.

Discussion and Recommendation

In the Court’s view, the agreement reached in 2020 between the Company and the thirty-nine Workers who are the subject of this dispute is not a ‘collective agreement’ in the sense that that term is normally used in an industrial relations context. However, it is an agreement, and its terms should be respected by both parties. The Court finds that the agreement did not commit the Company to make an ongoing annual payment of €1500.00 to each of the Workers. The Court, therefore, recommends that this aspect of the Worker’s claim should not be conceded.

The Court also recommends that the issue of reviewing the Workers’ grading structure should not be considered in isolation and should form part of the ongoing company-wide pay negotiations in which context grading issues relevant to all comparable Workers can be discussed.

The Court so recommends

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court
	Alan Haugh
AR	______________________
2nd December 2024	Deputy Chairman

NOTE

Enquiries concerning this Recommendation should be addressed to Aidan Ralph, Court Secretary.