Bord Gáis staff to ballot on possible industrial action

Bord Gáis is facing industrial action up to and including strikes by its entire workforce over the company’s decision to cut overtime and allowances without agreement.

The unions representing the energy supplier’s 1,000 staff will complete a ballot of its staff this morning and will know by this afternoon whether they are to press ahead with the action.

Bord Gáis says its “business environment” has changed and that has affected its financial position. It says it is now facing strong competition from a number of players in the energy market.

With that in mind it wants to save €115m over the next four years, with €34m to come from payroll costs. That equates to €8.5m per year.

To enable it to make that saving it began a process with the unions on two fronts at the start of the summer — changes to the system of pay across the company; and the eradication of overtime and allowance payments which have been in place for up to 15 years and which are now only made to 100 staff.

On the pay sphere, the company wants to change its system of pay scales to reflect what it describes as market rates. The salaries of groups of staff will be benchmarked against scales across the industry and where higher, the staff member would receive no pay increases until they progressed up the market pay scales.

In the absence of agreement on that change, the company would look for a 7.5% pay cut.

A deadline of January 1 was set for the completion of negotiations on the overtime and allowances. When that date passed without agreement another deadline was set for January 27. When that deadline was also passed the company decided to press ahead with making the cuts. It said a clause in the 2000 “Response” company-union agreement meant it could do so while the matter was still to be agreed.

In protest the union then withdrew from a conciliation conference with the company on the pay sphere which was due to take place on Jan 30.

Arthur Hall of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) said the ballot which is completed today is a protest against the company’s unilateral decision to stop the overtime and allowances without agreement. He said there was a fear that, if it was prepared to stop those payments, the company might press ahead unilaterally with the 7.5% pay cuts.

However a company spokesman said it would not use the “Response” clause to cut core pay and was willing to work through the industrial relations procedures on that issue.