Union offers to re-engage in bid to solve Luas row

SIPTU president Jack O’Connor has offered to re-engage with management to settle the Luas dispute, but said that inadequacies in the current offer to workers would have to be addressed.

Mr O’Connor also disputed figures by Transdev management which said that Luas drivers would get salary increases of 18% over the next three years.

The union leader insisted that the real figure was 10%, made up of:

• 2% when the dispute ends
• 2% on January 1, 2017
• 3% on January 1, 2018
• 3% on January 1, 2019.

Mr O’Connor said comments had been made representing the proposal as totally out of line with what is happening in the economy and inflating the figures to include increments which were already provided for in the current agreement.

“Actually, it is 10% over 39 months and only 2% upfront,” he said.

Luas operator Transdev has disputed this assertion and said 58% of drivers would see their pay rise by 18% by January 2019, not including the bonus.

Planned strike action tomorrow and Monday will affect thousands of people planning to visit the 1916 centenary commemorations in Dublin.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, Mr O’Connor said: “There is ample time for an engagement to take place with a view to addressing the inadequacies in the proposal that was put, that would enable the dispute to be called off.

“The proposal itself contains a very regressive concept, which is that the people who are recruited between now and when the Luas extension is ready to go would be paid on a new entry lower rate, which is considerably lower than the lowest rate which applies to workers when they join the company at the moment, and this is a concept which has been objected to strenuously.”

Following four days of strikes in February, and the threat of further action on St Patrick’s Day and at Easter, Transdev and Siptu hammered out proposals at the Workplace Relations Commission.

However, of the 167 drivers who voted, only two voted in favour of the WRC proposals.

Transdev management expressed their “shock and disappointment” at the rejection of the proposals.

Managing director Gerry Madden said the offer was at the “very outer limits of what we could afford”.

Earlier yesterday, Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe described the planned strike this weekend as unacceptable and called on Siptu to re-engage with management. “It is now vital that the leadership of Siptu engage in this matter to ensure the strikes that are planned for Easter Sunday and Easter Monday do not happen,” he said.

The rejection by Luas drivers of the proposed settlement from the WRC is justified, according to the Anti Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit. In a joint statement, the group described the proposed pay deal as divisive, saying: “Drivers would have to work an extra 12 days a year; the increase of 18.5% over three years would only apply to a minority of drivers; and disgracefully, the new entrants’ rates of pay were being pushed back to 2004 rates at €29,000 per annum.”