LCR22929

PARTIES:

DIVISION:

SUBJECT:

Complaint under Section 20(1) of the Industrial Relations Act 1969.

BACKGROUND:

The Union referred this case to the Labour Court in accordance with Section 20 (1) of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969, and agreed to be bound by the Court’s Recommendation. A Labour Court hearing took place on 2 February 2024.

RECOMMENDATION:

The Union is seeking an increase in (i) pay, (ii) mileage, and (iii) standby allowances on behalf of nine workers who comprise the TLS Customer Engineering team.

This matter before the Court is a unilateral referral by the Union under Section 20(1) of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969, under which the Union has agreed to be bound by the Court’s Recommendation.

The Employer declined an invitation to attend the hearing and instead submitted a document outlining its position on the matters in dispute. As the Employer did not participate in the hearing the Court was deprived of an opportunity to engage with it in relation to the matters before it. Accordingly, the Court did not take the correspondence received from the Employer into account when formulating this Recommendation and relied solely upon the written and oral submissions made by the Union at its hearing.

The Court is advised by the Union that there is a history of direct engagement and use of third-party processes between the union and the employer to resolve certain workplace place issues. The union submits that, in this case, it has attempted to resolve matters relating to pay, mileage and standby rates directly with the employer since June 2022. There were a number of unsuccessful direct engagements with the Employer, following which the Union sought to refer the dispute to the Workplace Relations Commission for a conciliation conference.  The employer declined to attend conciliation.  A Section 20(1) direct referral of the dispute to the Labour Court was submitted by the Union and subsequently withdrawn in favour of agreement between the parties to engage in a process with an Independent Facilitator.  The Facilitator’s recommendation was unanimously rejected by the union’s members. The Union advised the Court that there is now pent-up frustration on the part of its members in relation to the matters in dispute, hence a further Section 20(1) direct referral to the Court by the Union.

The matter before the Court relates to collective issues involving members of the Union in the employment. The role of the Court in cases such as this is to investigate the matters in dispute and make a recommendation that can assist the parties reach a resolution of that workplace dispute. In this case, the Court did not have the opportunity to investigate the matters in dispute with both parties from which standpoint the Court can best frame a recommendation setting out the terms upon which, in the opinion of the Court, the dispute should be settled.  Furthermore, as the parties did not avail of the services of the Workplace Relations Commission, the Court did not have the benefit of a confidential report from a Conciliation Officer of the Workplace Relations Commission addressing the matters in dispute that would normally accompany a joint referral of a dispute under section 26(1) of the Industrial Relations Act 1990.

In all the circumstances of this case, the Court confines itself to recommending that the parties would benefit from further constructive engagement on the matters referred by the Union to the Court, if necessary with the assistance of the State’s institutional dispute resolution framework, the Workplace Relations Commission, following which it would be open to the parties to jointly refer any outstanding issues to the Court under Section 26(1) of the Industrial Relations Act 1990, for investigation and recommendation. The Court recommends that such engagement should take place within eight weeks of the date of this Recommendation.

The Court so recommends.

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court
	Katie Connolly
SOC	______________________
15 February 2024	Deputy Chairman

NOTE

Enquiries concerning this Decision should be addressed to Ms Sinéad O'Connor, Court Secretary.