Staff unrest brewing at Tesco

Industrial unrest is brewing at Tesco Ireland over management plans to put hundreds of long-serving staff on new contracts and its withholding of a 2% pay increase from them.

Last January, Tesco management announced plans to move all its pre-1996 staff onto a “modern contract”. It said it would compensate all affected staff for loss of earnings, “the terms of which will be finalised over the coming weeks”.

Talks with unions in the intervening period have not, according to Mandate trade union, been helped by an “ultimatum” from management it will move long-serving staff onto the new contracts on April 18. The company unions, Siptu and Mandate, have said they would ballot for industrial action if the new contracts were imposed.

Last Friday, Mandate confirmed members working in Tesco had secured a 1.5% share bonus payment. That was shortly after a 2% increase for all workers was agreed in the Labour Court.

However, it said Tesco had refused to implement the pay increase for 1,000 of its longest serving staff members — the pre-1996 staff.

Yesterday, in a message to members, Mandate assistant general secretary Gerry Light said the union had received reports that pre-1996 members were being approached by management “wanting to know whether they would accept a revised redundancy package or a compulsory buy out of their terms and conditions of employment”.

He said that had never been formally tabled to the union by management.

“The developments announced last Friday and today have only come about following the decision to commence a national ballot for industrial action in pursuit of the full implementation of the recently-released Labour Court recommendation and the stance taken by your pre-96 fellow union members not to have their livelihoods savagely destroyed by their employer,” said Mr Light.

He also said his union would be lodging a pay claim with Tesco for 2016 “in the coming days”.

Last night, Tesco said it still wanted to implement the new contracts on April 18. It said it remained open to meaningful conversations with the trade unions “within the time set out” but said the talks had already been going on for nine weeks without agreement. It said staff wanted to understand what the proposed compensation package looked like from it directly and wanted it to consider making voluntary redundancy available as an option.

It said the opening of a voluntary scheme will be based on “reaching an overall agreement on this change”.