Cadbury granted injunction stopping electricians’ picket

CHOCOLATE manufacturer Cadbury Ireland Ltd was granted an injunction yesterday preventing picketing outside its plant in Coolock, Dublin, by supporters of the electricians’ strike.

The company sought the injunction in the High Court after claiming the picket, placed on Monday morning, was having a “catastrophic” effect on production at the plant.

It says none of its own 33 directly-employed electricians are involved in the dispute but, because its own tradespeople will not pass the picket, it has been forced to bring production to a standstill. The people involved in the picket are not known to Cadbury’s, it is claimed.

It also has a small number of sub-contractors but has no written agreement with them and, as far as the company is aware, none of the employees of these contractors, Cavanagh and Dowling Ltd, Brooklyn Engineering and Geoghegan Electrical Ltd, are on the picket.

Cadbury, which employs 1,100 people, 900 of them at Coolock, says all employees have been issued with protective notice. The majority of those in Coolock would have to be temporarily laid off, from yesterday evening, if the picket continued, the court heard.

Mr Justice Mary Laffoy granted the temporary injunction against persons unknown and against the electricians union the TEEU.

The injunction notice is to be posted on the entrance to the plant and to be served in the ordinary way on the TEEU, she said.

It prohibits picketing, watching or besetting the premises or the promotion and organising of industrial action outside the plant.

She gave leave to the TEEU to seek to vary her order on notice to the court and made the matter returnable to next Friday.

Roddy Horan SC, for Cadbury, told the court that under a registered agreement covering electricians, the company was entitled to one week’s notice of a strike and a ballot of union members must also first be carried out also. Neither of these had been done in this case which rendered this picketing illegal, he said.

“My client is facing a catastrophe because the plant is effectively at a standstill,” Mr Horan said.

In an affidavit from Paul Butler, Cadbury human resources manager, the court heard that while none of the company’s electricians are involved in the dispute, he understood from TEEU officials in the plant the picket had been organised by the union.

He said the dispute was not with Cadbury but between the TEEU and electrical contractor bodies, namely the Electrical Contractors Association and the Association of Electrical Contractors of Ireland.

He says that without electricians, maintenance problems at the plant cannot be resolved.

The company’s reputation and future investment plans are being seriously damaged in that it will be unable to fulfil its contracts with customers and warehouse levels will be depleted, Mr Butler said.