ESB staff vote for 20% cut in earnings

Workers at ESB have voted in favour of €140m in payroll savings which will see average workers taking a 20% cut in their earnings and 1,000 leaving the company.

The ballot was counted in Dublin and yielded a 63% vote in favour.

While staff who remain at the company will not see their basic pay cut, there will be changes in a number of areas including profit share arrangements and performance-related payments.

The changes will amount to €56.4m in savings.

The rest of the €140m will come from the 1,000 departures. Those are made up of about 700 voluntary redundancies and the rest through “natural wastage”.

ESB said along with the non-pay reductions its savings programme will see the company’s cost base reduced by €280m by 2015.

John Campion, ESB’s executive director of sustainability and HR, welcomed the acceptance of the proposals, which he said would ensure the company could invest in infrastructure while staying competitive in electricity and gas markets.

Meanwhile, staff unions at AIB have asked that management provide significant information on the plans for the bank into the future.

The request, made by the IBOA union through the mediation process under Labour Relations Commission director of conciliation Kevin Foley, is understood to involve questions as to what shape the bank will take once 2,500 staff leave.

Among the questions the union wants answered are:

nWhat closures are planned in the Republic, North, and Britain?

nWhat will the extent of relocation be for those affected by the closures?

nHow will the roles of the union’s members change when there are 2,500 fewer workers?

The IBOA said there was an onus on the company to provide transparency on how much more work would be required when almost one in six of the workforce was gone.

“We need to know how the bank intends to recover and what the impact will be after 2,500 people are gone,” an IBOA spokesman said.

The union has said it would oppose any attempt to introduce compulsory redundancies in order to reach the required number of departures.

It is also campaigning for the terms on offer to those who leave to be near — if not match — the terms it has agreed with management at Bank of Ireland.

Those terms are four weeks’ pay per year of service plus statutory.

However, the Department of Finance has been pressurising banks not to offer terms which exceed those which were on offer to staff in the HSE — three weeks’ pay per year plus statutory.

Meanwhile, a recommendation is expected next week following the mediation process between Ulster Bank and IBOA on the bank’s plans to get rid of 950 staff — 600 in the Republic and the rest in the North — before the end of the year.

Whatever independent mediator Martin King recommends will be subject to a ballot by IBOA members in the bank, with the outcome of that vote expected before the end of April.