Hibernian staff vote for action

HIBERNIAN staff have voted in favour of industrial action in protest at plans to relocate 580 jobs to India.

Unite trade union, which represents 1,600 of the company’s 2,200 staff, served the company with seven days notice of the action.

“We are now officially in dispute and there will not be any cooperation with the transfer of the work and jobs to India,” said Unite’s Jerry Shanahan. “In the event that the company starts trying to transfer the work or jobs then they will trigger the dispute. We are mandated to hold one-hour stoppages to bring home that the company proposals are not acceptable in their current form.

In response, Hibernian said it welcomed the willingness of Unite to enter talks on maximising the number of sustainable jobs in Ireland.

“The vote by 911 Hibernian staff to support the ballot by their union is clearly disappointing to Hibernian and the company is committed to engagement with Unite and all Hibernian’s 2,200 staff to avoid the one-hour stoppages and non-cooperation with management. Industrial action, if taken, will obviously cause some inconvenience to our 1.2 million customers and Hibernian is committed to avoiding this.”

Mr Shanahan also expressed concern that Hibernian’s parent company Aviva planned to sell the Indian business that was due to service the Irish market.

That means Hibernian’s future Indian operations will be serviced by Mumbai-based services giant WNS and not Aviva Group Services, as announced in June.

“The original reason they gave for transferring the work to India was that Aviva had a major operation in India,” said Mr Shanahan.

“Now they have taken the decision to sell off the Aviva Global services operation to WNS an outsourcing company in Mumbai means in essence they are no longer keeping it in-house. They have sold the business to this company so they are selling on the value of the Irish jobs for a profit to WNS.”