Days lost to industrial action halve year-on-year

DAYS lost to workers’ industrial action almost halved between April and June this year, compared with the same three-month period in 2010.

There were 572 days lost due to industrial disputes during the second quarter of this year, compared with 1,136 over the same period last year.

Between April and the end of June this year there were three disputes taking place, involving 462 workers and three firms, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office.

An industrial dispute at Architectural Aluminium Limited involved 402 workers and accounted for 70% of the days lost in the second quarter.

The official dispute resulted in construction work at the Mater Hospital in Dublin being suspended for a time.

The trade union Unite said the site had closed because union members supported two colleagues who were involved in the dispute with the contractor.

Another dispute that occurred at the Gaeltacht community development company Meitheal Forbartha na Gaeltachta Teo was over pay cuts and a management decision to serve four staff at Rosmuc, Co Galway, with redundancy notices.

A third industrial dispute occurred during the quarter at Waterford County Council’s bin collection service.

None of the disputes carried over to the next quarter.

The CSO figures show that 14,616 days were lost to industrial disputes during the first six months of 2009, 5,353 over the same period in 2010 and 3,023 in 2011.

The total number of days lost in 2009 was 329,593 with most of those days lost towards the end of the year due to disputes within the public sector.

There were 14 disputes recorded by the CSO last year, compared with 168 in 2009.