Aer Rianta SIPTU still plan strike to upset EU meetings
Although the other Aer Rianta unions the TEEU, IMPACT and Mandate have backed away from any move towards industrial action, SIPTU made it clear last night it was not happy with Minister Brennan's response to the concerns of Aer Rianta workers.
Both SIPTU and ICTU wrote to Minister Brennan yesterday seeking clarification on points raised by the minister in a letter sent to Congress last Friday in which he promised to share financial information related to his plan to break up Aer Rianta.
Mr Brennan also promised there would be no compulsory redundancies during the Government's break-up of the company.
However, while the other unions said the minister's letter was progress in the right direction, SIPTU said searching questions still had to be put to Minister Brennan and declined to suspend industrial action.
SIPTU president Jack O'Connor said the minister had not indicated at all how the commitments he was promising would actually be fulfilled.
"There is no basis on which to suspend industrial action at the moment. That depends on how those commitments are going to be substantiated," he said.
SIPTU's national industrial secretary Michael Halpenny said any strike action would be aimed at the EU justice and home affairs ministers meeting in Dublin Castle next week.
"We are a publicly owned company, we work with the public, we're happy to deliver the service to the public, we want to minimise any impact at all on the public, but we need to get our message across and we need to get it across where it matters," he said.
Although the smaller unions played down talk of a union divide last night, SIPTU's hard-line stance has effectively split the ICTU group of unions in two.
Mandate's Linda Tanham said Friday's letter from Minister Brennan had been a positive development.
"We got a lot in the minister's letter on Friday and he has offered financial information. When we get that we need to sit down and examine that," she said.
However Ms Tanham said all unions were still anxious to seek further clarification from the Department on the issues raised by Minister Brennan.
Meanwhile, speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, Minister Brennan said he was optimistic that next week's threatened industrial action at Aer Rianta could be avoided.
Further details of SIPTU's intentions are expected to emerge tomorrow after the union's industrial action committee meets in Cork to formalise its plan to disrupt next week's EU meeting.
A spokeswoman for the Taoiseach said it was still the Government's hope that the EU presidency not be disrupted and insisted that the Government had a business plan for the break-up of Aer Rianta. "Of course there is a plan. There are plans in relation to it," she said.
The spokeswoman also said there were no contingency plans, such as the use of Baldonnel, in the event of diplomatic air traffic being disrupted by industrial action.
