Nearly 8,800 days lost due to strike action in Q2

Strike action taken by workers at Dunnes Stores and Dublin Bus was the main cause of nearly 8,800 individual employee work days being lost during the second quarter of this year.

New quarterly data, published yesterday by the CSO, shows that a total of 8,792 work days were lost due to industrial disputes between the start of April and the end of June.

Three disputes were measured, concerning 10,100 workers.

The number of days lost, in the latest quarter, was down from 8,014 in the corresponding quarter last year.

On a quarter-by-quarter basis, however, there was a massive drop.

The first three months of this year saw over 24,000 days lost, only 9,000 less than for the four years of 2010-2013 combined, as four separate disputes in the education sector, involving nearly 28,000 workers, carried over from the end of last year.

Last December’s action, backed by teachers’ unions ASTI and TUI, which focused on proposed changes to the Junior Certificate cycle, accounted for a total of 23,500 lost working days last year.

Regarding the second quarter of this year, the CSO said that 65% of total days lost were accounted for by the transportation and storage sectors.

Dublin Bus workers went on strike in May over plans to put some routes out to private tender; while Dunnes workers staged industrial action, over rosters, in April.

The latter case accounted for an estimated 2,678 lost days, with the Dublin Bus dispute accounting for 5,714 days.

In the same three months of last year, there were seven disputes, involving just over 1,680 workers.

The number of lost days has been steadily rising, on an annual basis, with last year’s total passing the 44,000 mark.