4,000 staff who work for Irish Water to be balloted for industrial action on cuts

Up to 4,000 workers providing frontline services for Irish Water are to be balloted for industrial action up to strike over plans to reduce their number by up to 40%.

The local authority workers, members of Siptu, Impact, the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union and Unite, are holding the ballot over Irish Water’s plans to reduce the number of frontline workers by 1,500 by 2021.

Siptu, which expects to complete its ballot by November 20, said enforcing a reduction would be a breach of a service level agreement.

The union’s organiser Brendan O’Brien said: “The company has not explained who would carry out essential work if these jobs are lost. It can only be deduced that the plan is to expand the number of private contractors working for the company which will accelerate the creeping privatisation of this public utility.”

Impact has expressed concerns that an absence of information raises concerns that Irish Water would look to outsource or privatise some elements of its operation to boost its capacity.

Its national secretary Peter Nolan pointed out that there are now 356 fewer staff working under the service level agreements than two years ago.

The ballots are unlikely to be activated unless unions consider the company to have proceeded with a breach of service level agreements or a breach of protections against compulsory redundancy contained in the Lansdowne Road agreement.

Last night the company said the headcount reduction outlined by Irish Water did not represent any breach in service level agreements.

“The utility plans to invest €5.5 billion to bring Ireland’s water infrastructure up to an acceptable standard while bringing about operational efficiencies of €1.1bn of which, approximately one third, or €370m will be made through payroll savings and a reduction in operations staffing of 1,500 based on the 2014 figure. A reduction of 300 (of the total 1500) has already been achieved through retirements, redeployment and non-filling of vacancies as they arise.

“A further reduction of 1,200 will be brought about through consultation under the Service Level Agreement and Transformation Plan already agreed with local authorities. There will be no compulsory redundancies and any voluntary redundancies schemes will be a matter for Government and local authorities.”