Staff end industrial action after talks secure pay increases

MORE than 150 staff at Hewlett Packard have ended two weeks of industrial action after prolonged negotiations finally secured them the pay increases which they had been demanding.

For the past fortnight, workers on the company’s Bank of Ireland account had refused to provide any out-of-hours service or technical support in protest that a pay increase agreed when the workers were outsourced from the bank to Hewlett Packard had not been forthcoming. The increases were paid in 2005, but not in 2006.

The financial union, the Irish Bank Officials’ Association (IBOA), which had represented the workers when they were with Bank of Ireland, was still representing them in their new employment with HP.